


What's in a Name?

by Happynotfound



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, But its a minor character, Cancer, Like Slowwwww, M/M, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 57,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26614894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happynotfound/pseuds/Happynotfound
Summary: "There is someone out there made just for you, perfect in every way, that person is your soulmate. You might meet this person -you might not, you could even fall in love with someone else. Your soulmate is not an obligation, they’re just your complement."--Soulmate AU where the names your soulmate is called appear on your skin--
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 107
Kudos: 641





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: All the names/nicknames (used commonly) your soulmate is called by is written on you.
> 
> "____" means POV switch "^^^^" signifies a time jump with no POV switch :) 
> 
> If any of the involved parties express discomfort towards being written about romantically this will be taken down. Ship personas not people

George was two years old when the first few letters appeared on his skin, _Clay._

The young boy didn’t understand what they meant at the time, it was scary to see symbols appearing on your skin, especially since he couldn’t read, so he scurried off to his mother.

George’s mother wasn’t surprised to see the letters that had manifested on the boy’s skin, just above his left inner elbow, resting at the bottom of his bicep. It wasn’t uncommon for children to receive their first name on their skin in early childhood. Normally, if a child wasn’t born with a name on their skin, it meant that they were older than their soulmate, so it seemed that George’s was just born.

George’s mother sat him on her knee, she looked fondly over the confused boy. 

“George, there is someone out there made just for you, perfect in every way, that person is your soulmate. You might meet this person-you might not, you could even fall in love with someone else. Your soulmate is not an obligation, they’re just your complement.” George’s mother spoke to the boy, explaining the word as best she could to a four year old.

George didn’t quite understand, love was far out of his mind, but the look in his mother’s eyes told him to just nod along and go with it. 

Clay was the first name that appeared on George’s skin. 

____

  
  


Clay was born with a name, six letters placed just above his left hip bone. It meant his soulmate was older than he was. _George_. Clay’s parents were quite surprised, a male name, not that they were against it, it was just...different. 

Of course, there was just as much a chance of a soulmate being male as it is female, Clay’s parents, but I guess you could say Clay’s father was a bit, well...old fashioned.

____

At six years old, George got his second batch of letters, written in a blocky font was the word, _Bub,_ just on the outside of his right kneecap. 

Clay’s new nickname it seemed, not too odd or out of place. 

George didn’t notice the new word at first, only finding the letters after he had fallen while riding his bike in his small neighborhood, scraping the delicate skin of his knee, the dark lettering had surprised him. He dusted himself off, forgetting about his skinned shins, skittering off to show his parents.

____

  
  


Clay had known about soulmates from a young age. He was five now and he knew that not all soulmate pairs stayed together, or even ever met in some cases.

Out of eight billion people, who’s to say that your soulmate is in the same state as you, let alone the same country.

Clay’s parents weren’t soulmates, not even close. When Clay’s father had fallen for his mother, the man made the decision to cover all of the words on his body, small black boxes covering fate. Not even Clay’s mother knew what they were, just that they weren’t her name. But that was okay, they were in love, that was all that mattered, and plenty of people chose not to search for their soulmate.

At this point, Clay didn’t know whether he wanted to meet ‘George’ or not. What if George was mean? Or much older than him? Or if they didn’t get along? 

In truth, it was likely going to be a long time before he needed to worry about the whole soulmate thing, but it was hard to not think about it when there was another person’s name stamped on your body.

Clay had gotten a bit more used to the thought of his soulmate being a boy, George wasn’t exactly a common girl name. Clay’s parents however, held on to hope that maybe their son would fall in love with a girl -not his soulmate, like they had. 

^^^^

At seven, Clay got his second name, just under his left palm in tiny letters resting on the inside of the joint of his left wrist, _Georgie._

Creative really, who would have thought that ‘Georgie’ of all things would be the next name Clay would receive.

The young blond, however, wasn’t upset with the less than insightful word. Clay was happy to have a new name after seven years, no matter how similar it was to the first bunch of letters. The placement of the stamp was like a constant reminder of his soulmate, whoever they were, they were living pretty constantly in Clay’s head. 

____

George was twelve when people started to get curious about their classmate’s names, trying to decipher gender and imagining where their soulmates could possibly live or what they might look like just based on a few letters. 

George wasn’t the only one in his year with a soulmate that seemed to be the same gender, he had that going for him at least. George never tried to stand out in school, preferring to blend in and pass through unnoticed. 

He did well in school, middle school wasn’t too hard if you ignored the nosy kids asking whether or not he was gay. 

The British boy didn’t want to think about sexuality, he was only twelve for God’s sake, who was he to decide what he liked, he’d never even been kissed by anyone of any gender for that matter.

^^^^

At fourteen, George began to come into the realization that he might like the thought of his soulmate being a boy. He already knew it was pretty likely that Clay was a guy, so it wasn’t wrong of him to be okay with it...right? Clay was supposed to be his perfect match, so it had to be okay to like boys...yeah?

George still moved like a shadow through school, in the background, not hiding, but not trying to be noticed either. His friends had moved on to join into groups that were not so...well, lame, leaving George to find consolation elsewhere. 

George didn’t really have a place where he belonged, it sounds sad, but it was the truth, he had given up on soccer after the older boys had teased him for the name of his soulmate, choosing to stay indoors most of the time, he couldn’t get picked on if he didn’t go outside.

In all of the time alone at home, the brunet discovered Minecraft, playing casually grew into a slight addiction, building, fighting, beating the game- George was hooked. 

^^^^

After lots of time spent on the computer, playing games and visiting some questionable websites, at fifteen years old, George found an interest in coding. With all of the time he spent at his old desktop monitor, it wasn’t a surprise when he began to dabble in Java. Tutorials on YouTube and many, many hours of practice made way for what would become a huge part of his life. 

  
  


____

Thirteen years old, Clay had grown up a bit, and the idea of a soulmate had him a bit indifferent. Who was the universe to decide what was perfect for him, maybe he didn’t want his soulmate to be a guy. He began to understand why his father had covered the names on his skin, it was like a predestination, like you didn’t have a choice.

Maybe he’d just wait for whatever happens, he didn’t need to search for his soulmate.

____

George was sixteen when he had fully realized his sexuality, he liked men. He only hoped that his soulmate was on the same path to discovery that he was. 

His coding had developed into a hobby, creating small plugins and mods for Minecraft in his free time. 

George had improved his setup some, a new pc and monitor sat on the desk in his room, his back was definitely conformed to the shape of the shitty desk chair with the amount of time he spent staring at the screen, practicing for hours upon hours at as many languages as he could find. He had something that kept him busy now.

____

Clay hated school, he was fifteen now, and had a track record for not showing up to school, like, ever. It wasn’t his fault, it was boring, he hated the students and teachers, he’d rather do online if it meant he wouldn’t have to leave the house.

The blond had gotten into the habit of wearing a bracelet on his left wrist, covering the ‘Georgie’ just under his palm. He didn’t need the world to see what was meant for him, even if he didn’t really like what was written there, he wanted it to be for him and only him. 

Sure, Clay was in trouble with his parents, but what was the point? He’d never use chemistry in his life ever again, if it wasn’t relevant, there was no use putting in effort. 

Clay had thought long and hard about what his soulmate's name could mean for his sexuality. (Long and hard (hehe) meaning a good three and a half minutes at three a.m. one morning when he couldn’t sleep)

He had decided that a male soulmate wasn’t the end of the world, but his parents however, well, they made him want to ignore the fact that his soulmate was a boy and hide forever in a hole deep underground.

The bracelet he wore was now a part of his everyday outfit. His parents didn’t question it, they were probably hoping Clay would end up getting the names covered permanently like they had, but really, Clay just wanted to keep the name to himself, no one needed to know about this George person but himself. 

____

  
  


George was eighteen, this ‘Clay’ person, wherever he was, had to be about sixteen now. 

A few months ago, George had begun working as a coder and as staff on this guy’s Minecraft server. His first real opportunity as a programmer, and he loved it. It was a real excuse to sit at his desktop all day without his mother questioning his sanity. All he had to say was ‘he was working’ when really he was coding minigames and playing with friends.

The owner of the server called himself Bad. He was a nice guy, a bit on the strange side but nice nonetheless. In place of cursing he said ‘muffin’ at least once per sentence, but he was nice, and he paid George for his work so George didn’t mind too much.

It was a few weeks after he had started work for Bad that the third name showed up on his skin. 

Dream

In swirling cursive right under the middle of his left collarbone. It was small and delicate, like a whispered secret. 

George was surprised when he looked in the mirror after his shower, only a towel around his waist. 

His fingers brushed over the pretty lettering, so different from the curt and almost formal font of the other words. 

This nickname was special. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While George is working to create a minigame for Bad's server, Bad insists that he has someone to help George in the last few steps of development and for testing before the game officially goes live on the server.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two folks!
> 
> Still a bit slow, but I promise good things will happen soon!

_ Dream _

_ In swirling cursive right under the middle of his left collarbone. It was small and delicate, like a whispered secret.  _

_ George was surprised when he looked in the mirror after his shower, only a towel around his waist.  _

_ His fingers brushed over the pretty lettering, so different from the curt and almost formal font of the other words.  _

_ This nickname was special.  _

****

Clay was seventeen when he met Bad. 

Bad was the owner of a pretty popular Minecraft server when they met, Munchy MC. Clay spent a lot of his time avoiding school to play minigames and hide from his family in his room on this particular server. 

Clay had gained some attention from the owner of the server with all of the time he had played, which struck up a conversation between the two.  After some time talking about hobbies and interests, Clay learned that Bad was looking for some staff on the server, mods and the likes, Clay’s interest was piqued.  He took the offer after some brief consideration, and was accepted to be a part of game testing for the coders. 

____

George, nineteen now, was assigned a new project for Munchy MC, Bad wanted a new game to be put up on the server. As interest in Minecraft began to grow again, the server had started growing in popularity and users. 

The brit had been on call with Bad for several hours now, listening to the man ramble on and on about the growing community while George was trying to write a new code for a pvp game. 

George was tapping away at his keyboard while he listened to Bad speak, but his attention was caught when Bad mentioned a new addition to the server staff. 

“Yeah, there’s a new guy, his tag is Dream, he's gonna mod the lobby and stuff,” Bad spoke quickly with little thought, he didn’t notice that the tapping of George’s keys had stopped.

What were the chances that some random on Minecraft was his soulmate, but the name still made his heart flutter a little bit and his stomach twist at the thought. 

George was made aware of his sudden silence, figuring he probably needed to respond to his friend, “Oh, that’s cool Bad~”

George was distracted now, pulled out of the trance that the coding had put him in. 

The brunet shook his head, trying to physically knock out the questions in his head. It wasn’t anything to panic about, anyone on Minecraft could use the gamer tag ‘Dream’ it wasn’t like it was super original.

George rubbed his hands over his face, leaning forward onto his desk, forehead cradled in his palms. Bad had gone quiet, and the Brit could faintly hear the older man tapping away on his keyboard. 

“Y’know, Bad, I’m kinda tired,” George tried to fake the best yawn he could muster, “I think I’m gonna head to bed.”

The older man was chipper, and a bit too close to his mic, a loud, “Alrighty!” rang through George’s headset. “Night, George!” Bad ended the call

George shut down Java, wheeling back from the desk. He heaved his weight out of the chair, only on his feet for a few seconds before he flopped down face first onto his bed. He sighed into the unmade sheets, wiggling up until his head was mostly on the pillow before closing his eyes and trying to force himself to stop thinking about his stupid soulmate and the names written on his body.

____

Clay was still pretty new to Munchy when Bad gave him a project, not like his normal duties -to monitor the lobbies and make sure nothing crashed, no, this was to test and alter a new game with one of Bad’s programmers. 

This was exciting, almost like a promotion. For Clay this was like going from the janitor to manager, it was huge! He accepted the offer with no thought and Bad passed on the coders Discord link, telling him to message him and see when he wanted to start running tests. 

Clay told him he’d message him in the morning once he’d woken up fully, it was late now, well past midnight, whoever this programmer was, they could wait.

____

The day after George had been on call with Bad, the man came to him with a proposition. 

“I want you to work with one of my game testers to finish your project,” Bad had said, they were on video call, so Bad could probably see the furrowing brows of the brunet. 

George opened his mouth to speak, but Bad cut him off, “I know you wanted this to be  _ your  _ project, but I really want to see what this kid can do, he’s like eighteen or something and I want to give him a job that’s not just monitoring the ping, please?”

See the thing was, Bad had already guaranteed this tester the job, so George really couldn’t say no.

“Bad…” George started, Bad gave him puppy eyes through the monitor camera. George sighed, he couldn’t say no to the man who was basically his boss could he? “Fine, I’ll do it, send me their contact,” George huffed. 

“Yay!” Bad celebrated the small victory, “I already gave him your discord, he’s gonna message you sometime tomorrow, byeeee!”

Bad left the call before George could react to the information that he now had no choice but to accept the “help” that he didn’t even want. 

George ruffled his hair, pushing the short bangs out of his face. He went to bed cursing Bad’s name, George didn’t need help. 

____

Clay was surprised when he woke up early the next morning, on a Saturday of all days, yay for five hours of sleep. The clock on his nightstand said 5:13 AM, how rude of it. The sun wasn't even up and he could hear his parents bustling around on the first floor.

Clay’s room was on the second floor, while his parents' was on the first, they didn’t come upstairs much. Being an only child sucked sometimes, but at least his mom and dad left him alone.

He remembered that he was supposed to message Bad’s coder. It was still early yet, the dude probably wasn’t up anyway.

The blond rolled out of bed, sock feet thumping to the floor. He stumbled over to the monitor on his desk, slumping down into the desk chair he’d taken from the office his dad never used. 

Clay wiggled the mouse to wake up the PC, Discord still open from the night before. He saw a message from Bad with the coder’s Discord username, and a “:)”.

With a smile and an eye roll at the childish man, he added the tag as a friend. 

Dream:  _ Hey, this is BadBoyHalo’s game tester. He said you have a minigame that you need finished? _

Clay thought that it sounded professional enough, he wanted to make a semi-good impression. 

____

George woke up to find a DM on discord, it was from Dream, so the guy he was supposed to be working with was also the new guy that Bad had mentioned that just so happened to have the same name as the one stamped on his skin? Thanks universe. 

His breath caught for a second in his throat, just looking at the name that was also written on his clavicle was a bit overwhelming, was this really Bad’s tester?

George reread the few words that were sent no less than four hours ago. To be fair George had woken up at 2 pm, his sleep schedule was pretty screwed up, but he was twenty, he could do what he wanted.

George couldn’t tell what time zone Dream was in, he could have gotten up like a normal person, who knows.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, George decided he should probably respond.

~~_ Hey, this is Bad’s coder, what’s up? _ ~~ __ Too casual.

~~_Yeah, that’s me._~~ Too blunt.

_ Hi, yeah, I’m Bad’s coder _ . Good enough

George hit send. 

____

It had been hours before Clay had gotten Discord notification from the user he’d messaged earlier that morning  _ GeorgeHD, _ huh, George, Clay glanced at the bracelet that had worked its way down his wrist, exposing the name sitting there, but what are the chances?

_ George: Hi, yeah, I’m Bad’s coder _ . 

Well straight to the point, Clay thought. The blond was sitting on the couch with a book, he had been monitoring the server lobby for a bit before he’d gotten bored, deciding to occupy himself with anything else. In truth, Clay had just been staring at the pages blankly, head empty. 

_ Dream: Cool, I’m Dream by the way, I’ve just been a moderator on Munchy, kinda wanted to get into Java but haven’t yet :) _

The smiley face was kind of an afterthought, he didn’t know what this guy was like, would he think the punctuation was too aggressive? 

It was only a few minutes before Clay’s phone buzzed again.

_ George: Nice to meet you, sorry it took so long to respond, I have a shit sleep schedule :P _

Okay so smileys and emojis are good, where does this guy live? Is he even in America?

_ Dream: It’s cool, Bad didn’t tell me what timezone you were in and I messaged right when I got up _

Honesty is the best policy, right?

_ George: I’m on BST, but I sleep when I feel like it :P _

Another emoji, was he overthinking this? Maybe.

_ Dream: Oh, I’m in EST, isn’t it like 3 o’clock over there? _

He was genuinely curious.

_ George: Yeah, it’s 2:37, I went to sleep late _

Okay...so that felt like the end of that conversation, maybe ask when he wants to work?

_ Dream: So when is good for you to work together? Maybe call too? _

The thought of going on call with someone he’d just started messaging with made him a bit nervous. Hell it had taken him two months of working on Munchy to finally pick up Bad’s calls, Clay was just a private person. But if work had to be done, it would be hard to communicate over DM.

_ George: Well you’re five hours behind, so how about tomorrow, 11 my time, 6 your time? _

Okay, he had a time, that was just the easy part, scheduling is one thing, but actually speaking is another. 

_ Dream: Sounds good. Can your sleep schedule handle that? :P _

Clay couldn’t help but poke, he hoped the other boy saw it as lighthearted and not any other way, if he was going to have to work with him he wanted to make a good impression at least. 

_ George: D: _

_ George: rude _

Well at least the other boy had a sense of humor, as long as things went like this, Clay figured they could get along fine. 

____

George was a bit panicked at first, would punctuation come off too mean? He didn’t really want the help per se, but he wasn’t one to be intentionally mean for no reason. He should at least give it a try, right?

After the first few messages, things seemed to flow a bit better, the use of colon-p was comforting, he could at least message like he normally would. 

After the crack at his sleep schedule, it almost felt like talking to a friend, it was natural and lighthearted.

George paused. Bad had said Dream was about seventeen, hopefully he knew anything about programming or this was going to be a long project.

This wouldn’t be so bad, now just thirty hours until he had to actually speak to Dream.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have changed the number of chapters from three to indefinite because this is getting longer than I expected !!
> 
> Feedback is appreciated but of course not necessary, I expect next chap to be up in less than a week
> 
> Thanks for reading!<3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The call was scheduled, both boys are counting down the nervous hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3!!
> 
> Here we go, this got a lot longer than I was expecting but here we are.

_ This wouldn’t be so bad, now just thirty hours until he had to actually speak to Dream. _

____

Clay grinned at the comment

_ George: rude _

At least the guy could take a joke. 

_ Dream: :D yup _

A little over a day before they would be working on whatever George had put together. 

____

The conversation seemed to come to a casual close, they had a time set up, enough for George to make sure there weren’t any stupid mistakes in the code before he let Dream see it. Even though Bad had said Dream didn’t have much coding experience, George still wanted to be sure. 

So what if they were supposed to be proofing the program together, George was not going to make a fool out of himself.

George clicked out of the Discord tab, opening the program that he’d been making steady progress on for two weeks now, he was in the home stretch, all that was left was to fine tune and do some test runs with it on Munchy. 

____

It was six o’clock when Clay’s father came home from work, and another forty five minutes for his mother. By then, Clay was at the kitchen table pretending to do school work. 

It was pretty clear that Clay did not like school, just based on the fact that he rarely showed up in the first place was proof enough. But when he sat in the chair that didn’t allow anyone to see what he was doing on his laptop, it was pretty easy to fake.

To his parents, Clay was writing an eloquent thesis for his US government class, but in reality, Clay was attempting to teach himself how to code on Java with a muted and subtitled YouTube video.

His brows furrowed at the mess of symbols on the screen, he had fucked something up. Maybe he should have tried for something a bit easier for his first time actually coding. 

Clay was sitting criss-cross in the hard wooden chair, two tabs split his screen, one with the muted video, the other a series of sloppy lines of code, it could be better, but it would do for now. 

It really shouldn’t be this hard for God’s sake, he was just altering small things in Minecraft to start, but really he hoped to work up to some real plugins at some point- ones that would completely change the gameplay. 

See the only problem was- well, if he made these plugins, Clay really had nothing to do with them if he actually made content. The thought of people seeing who he was terrified him, he’d always been a private person, no one needed to know much past his name. So YouTube was pretty out of the question, unless he wanted to be a faceless, nameless, voiceless blob that nobody knew anything about.

Clay was shocked out of his train of thought by the sound of footsteps coming from the kitchen and progressively getting closer. The sudden sound snapped him out of his trance, quickly slamming the laptop shut and looking up with wide eyes at his mother, who stood in the doorway leading into the kitchen, one eyebrow raised and a questioning smile gracing her lips. 

Well, shit, Clay knew what this looked like, but he wasn’t dumb enough to be watching porn in the middle of the kitchen goddammit. 

Clay decided to ‘play it off’, but not very well unfortunately. 

“Hey, mom~” he said, it wasn’t like he was actually doing anything wrong…but the implications, ya know?

Clay’s mother just gave an amused look at her son’s behavior, trying to look as innocent as possible and failing wonderfully, eyes wide and a fake smile plastered on, still sitting criss-cross in the chair. 

The woman just shook her head at the odd behavior, “Hi, Clay.”

Clay watched her leave, muttering quietly to herself about something or another. Oh well. He didn’t mean to look suspicious, it just...kinda happened.

Disregarding the situation, the blond reopened his laptop, trying once again to make sense of the lines of code on the screen.

Twenty six hours until the call,

____

It was about five in the morning when George found the obligation to go and check (once again) that the code had no mistakes, sometimes those late night (ass crack of dawn) commitments just struck.

George had scanned over the program at least three times today, every few hours, and now once again. He was waiting to find the big mistakes he had been expecting, turns out, it all looked nearly perfect. (Even after the fourth time making sure it was fine)

Sure the code overall could be a bit neater, but the only things he had needed to fix were small typos. George was pretty impressed with himself, he had expected to find several things that would take some time to fix but it all looked pretty good in his opinion.

Twenty one hours until the call.

____

Clay had gone to sleep early that night, it wasn’t really intentional, after dinner he sort of just decompressed in his room. He must have been tired because the sun had barely set before the blond was snoring into his pillow.

^^^^

Clay was awake -unfortunately- at five in the morning, once again. 

It was a Sunday, his father had work, his mother would be home all day. Meaning he couldn’t walk around the house screaming at the top of his lungs like he normally would...it was stress relieving, okay?

It would likely be another hour before his dad was up. Clay rolled over onto his stomach, pulling the quilt on his bed more tightly over himself and wiggling into the warmth of his pillow. There was no point being awake now, he had nothing planned until his ‘date’ with that coder, but that was hours away. 

So Clay fell back asleep. 

Thirteen hours until the call.

____

After George had woken up at five in the morning to run over his code again, well, he never actually fell back asleep. It was noon now, so he’d only been up for seven hours.

See what George didn’t take into consideration was that since he hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in several days, he was definitely going to crash sometime soon.

At four in the afternoon, George crawled from the cave that was his room. It really was a cave, with the curtains drawn, the only light came from the computer monitor sitting on the desk, a soft white light that was enveloped in the darkness of the room

He clambered through the hallway to search for...what time is it? Mid afternoon dinner? 

George was rifling through the kitchen cabinets for a meal when his mother called. The sudden noise in the silent apartment was startling. Living alone was nice, but it made you pretty jumpy, especially when you never leave home in the first place so you’ve gotten to the point where anything scares you. 

But that was a problem for another time.

George reached across the counter for the phone, a loaf of bread in his right hand. 

“Hullo?” he answered.

“Hi, George,” a cheerful voice echoed through the tinny speaker.

George snapped himself out of his sleep deprived stupor, “Hi, Mom. What’s up?” 

“Your father and I are coming near your apartment around eight o’clock for work so we were wondering if you’d like to get dinner with us.” George could tell she had a hopeful look on her face just listening to the sound of her voice.

He almost accepted the offer when he remembered the call he had scheduled less than twenty four hours ago.  _ Damn it. _

“Mom~” George began, a grimace on his face. “I’m really sorry Mom, but I have a meeting scheduled for tonight…” George was guilty, it wasn’t often that his parents came near his apartment, they lived over two hours away, so it really hurt to deny the offer. 

George knew she was probably let down, she spoke a bit quieter, “It’s alright dear, there’s plenty of other nights for you to visit, maybe we can make the trip down in a few weeks,” she sounded happy still, not as upset as George thought she would be. 

“Yeah, another night, Mom,” George paused, both lines were silent, “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Georgie,” she responded, her voice was comforting, like a warm hug in the middle of winter when the cold is biting at your skin. Okay maybe George was touch starved, but it made him happy to hear her voice.

They said their goodbyes, George set his phone back down on the counter. Huffing at the bread that wasn’t going to magically become a sandwich any time soon. 

Twenty minutes and one sandwich later, George was back in his room. This time, sprawled across the duvet on his bed on his stomach, phone in his left hand and right arm tucked under his pillow. 

Scrolling through Twitter calmed his mind a bit, less panicked compared to the five am panic this morning. George began to feel his eyes get heavy, barely registering the words on his screen anymore

George clicked out of the app, swiping over to set an alarm for 10:30, it was nearly five now, plenty of time to get ready for the call, all he had to do was go sit at his desk anyway.

George was asleep within minutes.

Six hours until the call

____

Clay’s father was home early at three o’clock.

The older man trudged up the stairs to Clay’s room, the sound of the creaking stairs was like a warning to Clay. Clicking out of the Java program he’d been trying for days to finish, the blond wheeled away from the desktop monitor to hear a knock on the door.

“Yeah?” Clay responded, the door groaned as it opened, letting in the pale yellow light from the hallway.

“We’re going out for dinner,” his father grunted, “Be ready by six,” the man moved to close the door.

Uh-oh, one problem there. 

“Dad?” The boy started, the older man looked back, waiting for an argument, “I have a meeting with a programmer at six,” Clay knew his voice was meek by the look on his father’s face. 

“A meeting?” Clay nodded, “For what?” The man’s voice was gruff.

“A project that I have to work on...for the Minecraft server,” Probably not the best idea to mention Minecraft, his father definitely didn’t approve of the way that he sat in front of the monitor all day. 

“That stupid game…” his father whispered to himself. “Who’s the programmer?” 

Oh, here we go. 

“Some guy named George,” He saw anger in his father’s eyes at the mention of the name that just so happened to also be written on his body. Clay continued, “He’s from the UK or something.”

Clay’s father stepped more fully into the bedroom, “Have you been looking for your soulmate, Clay?” HIs face flared red, like an unsightly balloon. 

“What? No, he’s just a programmer on the server, I just talked to him yesterday for the first time, I can show you the messages.” Clay tried to keep his voice steady. Do you know how many people in the world are named George?

With the commotion, Clay’s mother made the ascent up the stairs to find the two men of the house arguing. 

“What’s the issue, boys?” it wasn’t rare for the two to quarrel over stupid things, this was likely one of those times.

“He’s been talking to his soulmate,” the gruff voice responded.

Clay’s mom raised an eyebrow at the exasperated looking boy still in his desk chair.

“Clay?” she questioned.

“Mom," he'd never admit the whiny voice that came with the word, "I got assigned to work with this coder for something on the Minecraft server, his name just so happens to be George,” the woman could tell that her son was annoyed by the way he flung his arms around as he spoke, a classic irritated Clay move.

The three held a moment of silence, pregnant with tension between the two males. 

“I can show you messages? We have a call tonight to work on a project,” Clay tried, if anyone was going to believe him, it would be his mom.

“Honey, I think he’s telling the truth,” her gaze was firm, daring the other man to test her. She turned to Clay next, “Your father and I are going to dinner, we should be home by eight, good luck with your project.” She gave a gentle smile.

With that, they left, leaving the door open.

Clay listened as they went back downstairs. 

“We’re leaving now, bye hon,” his mother shouted up the stairs.

“Bye,” he responded. The blond didn’t know what to think, he slumped back into the office chair swiveling softly as he thought. He really hated all of this soulmate shit.

One hour until the call

____

George was still dead asleep when his alarm went off, but there was a problem, his phone was on silent. 

The cell buzzed dutifully against the duvet for five minutes before shutting off, the brunet still snoring quietly, truly crashed after several days of inconsistent sleep. 

Half an hour until the call.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really thinking that the call would be in this chapter, but I hit 1500 words and was nowhere near done, so it's going to be in the next chapter I promise !!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading<3


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally time for the call...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4!!

_George was still dead asleep when his alarm went off, see the issue was...well, his phone was on silent._

_The cell buzzed dutifully against the duvet for five minutes before shutting off, the brunet still snoring peacefully, truly crashed after several days of inconsistent sleep._

_Half an hour until the call._

____

Clay was sitting at his desk, Discord open on the screen in front of him. The blond was watching for the ‘online’ symbol to light up next to George’s name. He looked at the clock in the bottom right corner of the monitor, _5:59_ it said. 

It was pretty late for George, maybe he was eating dinner? There was no use getting nervous over this stupid call. 

____

George was woken up by a buzzing under his arm, he had managed to roll over on top of his phone. Blinking away the confusion of sleep, he shuffled to the side to grasp for the shaking cell. 

____

It was nearly six forty now, Clay was beginning to think he had gotten stood up, not that this was a date or anything. 

You know what, fuck it. Clay was going to call this guy, hopefully he had Discord notifications active on his phone. 

Clay hit call.

____

George finally managed to locate his phone, but the buzzing had stopped, his bleary eyes found the time, 11:40, his eyes closed before snapping open again. 

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._

George rolled out of the bed, covers flopping to the floor in a pile. 

He flew to the desk chair, nearly tipping over with the force of the impact. 

“C’mon, C’mon,” he begged the monitor to wake up, wiggling the mouse frantically. 

The Discord tab was still open from earlier, on Dream’s name was lit, he was online, probably waiting for his stupid ass. Thanks a lot, alarm clock. George took a breath, calming himself as he picked up the headset on the desk, steadying the headphones on his ears. 

George hit Dream’s name, and pressed call.

____

Clay was screwing around on his phone when a ringing came through the headset still on his ears. The sudden noise startled him, he glanced up at the Discord screen still up on the monitor.

_Join Call: GeorgeHD_

Holy shit, maybe he didn’t get stood up.

He clicked the answer button, adjusting the headset.

“Hey?” Clay said, what a stupid way to start.

The boy on the other side of the line cleared his throat, “Uh, hi. I promise I can explain…”

The boy had an accent, British probably, his voice was a bit higher than Clay’s, that or he was nervous- The blond surely was near quaking in his chair.

Clay heard the other boy take a breath, “So, I was awake at five and I set an alarm for ten thirty because I have a shitty sleep schedule and I was about to pass out in my chair and I figured I could nap for a few hours before this call but my ringer was on silent and I didn’t hear the alarm go off so I was really late and I’m really sorry because you probably think I’m a huge douche but it was completely an accident and I feel really bad,” he took a gasping breath, “Sorry.”

Clay was stunned, not really sure how to one: respond, and two: process all of the words that were just spat at him. When the word vomit finally comprehended in his mind, he couldn’t help the giggle that left his mouth. 

“George...buddy, take a breath,” Clay was nearly full on laughing now.

“Well~” George couldn’t think of any way to defend himself, “I didn’t want you to think I’d, like, forgotten or something,” George tried not to be embarrassed by the situation, but with the bedhead he knew he had, as well as the wrinkled pajamas- not to mention the laughing man on the line, were really testing his control.

“Okay, okay,” Clay was smiling even though the other boy couldn’t see him. “I’ll be honest, I thought I was being stood up,” The blond reached up to ruffle the hair around his headset. 

George huffed, “Exactly! That’s why I was apologizing," George was just an indignant person, okay?

“Alright, alright, maybe we should try to be productive, yeah?” Clay offered, they weren’t going to get much done if they sat here bickering.

George scrunched his nose slightly in thought, “So, uh, what do you go by? Just Dream?” George asked, hoping not to sound too rude in his question.

Clay thought for a moment, he barely knew this guy, Dream would work, for now at least. 

“Um, yeah, just Dream,” Clay answered, “You just go by George?” If he got to use a fake name he should at least give the other boy a chance.

“Yeah, just George,” he answered. How old was this kid anyway? George didn’t think to stop his mouth when the thought came into his head, “How old are you, Dream?” Whoops, didn’t mean to let that slip, George bit his lip, hoping it didn’t come off rude.

“I’m seventeen,” Clay answered, “I turn eighteen in a month, in August,” he really hoped that this programmer wasn’t like twenty eight or something weird, that’d be awkward.

“So are you a senior, then? And I’m twenty,” George said. Man his mouth really wasn’t having a filter today.

“Yeah...I’m a senior, technically,” Clay grimaced a bit at the question, “I don’t exactly go to school very often,” he finished, might as well be honest.

At the awkward silence, George cleared his throat, stretching his arms over his head, the boy accidentally yawned into the mic of his headset. He muttered out a sorry to the other boy, explaining that he’d only been out of bed for about ten minutes at that point.

George could hear a small giggle from Dream that came after his sleepy explanation. 

“Alright, let me put this plugin into a new world, I’ll send you the IP, give me one second.” George said, fingers clicking away at the keyboard, working to put the code into a new server for him and Dream to start testing on.

“Alright, I sent it,” George said, brain focused on the code download.

“Okay, my Minecraft’s starting,” Dream replied.

A few seconds later, in the chat box on George’s monitor, _Dream has joined the game._

Next to where George had spawned, a solid colored body appeared. He wasn’t sure what color exactly, maybe yellow or green? He was colorblind, it wasn’t his fault.

The program finally loaded into the game, it was a pvp mod. 

George spawned in items and they got to work. 

They took some time testing with the edits to the game, light commentary through the whole thing. There were only a few bugs, just small things that wouldn’t take too long to fix. After a bit less than an hour, it looked like everything was good, George said he’d work on the bugs later and that they could test again another time.

The conversation had been pretty blunt after Dream’s admission of not going to school, but the mood changed pretty quickly when Dream set them both into survival mode, pulling out a diamond sword and hiding it in his hotbar.

George only noticed when he suddenly fell out of the sky, creative mode getting turned off. 

The brunet looked toward the smiley face skinned player, it was only a moment before Dream was advancing on him with a sword in his hand.

“C’mere, Georgie~” Dream sang in a menacing voice. George may or may not have blushed a little at the nickname, it was one only his mother used, not to be said by seventeen year old boys he had just met. 

With the fall damage he had taken, it wasn’t long before Dream was able to kill him. The other boy was taunting him now, running circles around his Minecraft avatar that had just respawned in the world. Before Dream had the chance to kill him, George switched into creative mode to collect materials to chase the other down with. 

When he switched back into survival mode, the brunet immediately set to work trying to kill Dream. 

____  
  


Clay was startled by the sudden attack. George had a pretty basic skin, it looked like a modified Steve with a Supreme shirt and clout goggles on, not frightening unless it was chasing you down and trying to murder you. 

George was cackling as the boys dodged in and out of a forest near spawn, both with diamond swords in hand. 

  
  


“Oh, Dream~” George dragged the nickname out, a smile splitting his face as the solid colored character swerved past trees, narrowly avoiding George’s sword. 

____

“Leave me alone, George,” Clay thought the other boy was still on his tail, little did he know, George had stopped in a small clearing of trees to look for the American.

Clay, not realizing he was no longer being chased, tried to loop around and throw George off his trail, he had thought the plan worked until he came face to face with a pair of clout goggles. 

____

With no notice, Dream had jumped from behind a tree in the clearing the British boy had paused in. 

_Uh-oh._

Dream laughed, not too unlike a movie super villain. Oh how the tables have turned.

George turned and high tailed it out of the open space. He just wasn’t fast enough.

Dream cackled as he landed hit after hit on the other boy, not giving him a chance to run as he swung his sword. 

In his headset, a shriek rang through his ears, who knew a grown man could even make noise like that?

“No! No! Leave me alone, Dream, leave me alone!” the older man screamed like he was actually being stabbed with a sword. 

“C’mon, George, just die already,” Clay teased, smiling at the fight he was definitely winning. 

“Dream~” George whined at the _“You Died”_ screen. “That wasn’t fair~”

Clay rolled his eyes, “Oh c’mon, lose like a man, George,” but his voice had no bite to it, just poking fun.

“Yeah, whatever,” George relaxed back into his chair, “cheater.”

Clay spluttered for words to argue back with, finding nothing. George was satisfied, smiling at the disarray of the other boy.

Clay found himself yawning, the clock to his right read 8:30, he had been up for a while now, considering he was up way early this morning. 

“Tired, Dream?” George questioned, the comment sounded a bit teasing but George was genuinely curious.

George heard the other boy yawn again, followed by a meek, ‘yeah’.

Clay stretched his arms over his head, spine cracking loudly with the time spent in the same position: hunched over the computer. 

“I’ve been up for a while,” Clay hoped he was loud enough for George to hear him clearly, but truthfully, he was too tired to care. “I think I’m gonna head to bed now, I think we made good progress.”

George smiled at the obviously tired boy, “Thanks for the help, Dream.”

“The code looked really good, George, I don’t know a lot but it seemed to function pretty well,” Dream’s voice had gotten much softer compared to the yells and cackles from before.

From downstairs, Clay could hear the front door opening and closing, as well as his parents footsteps through the downstairs.

“We’re home,” his mother shouted. Clay muted for a moment to respond with a lazy ‘kay’.

George saw that the other boy had muted, he was happy to know that Dream at least thought his code was good, even if he didn’t know much about coding, having a good first response really meant a lot to him.

“Sorry, I’m back, my parents just got home,” Clay spoke a bit more clearly into the microphone now, trying to keep his voice down so his parents didn’t come upstairs when he inevitably made too much noise.

George hummed in response, scrolling through Twitter now, only half paying attention to what was on the screen, the other half of his brain was waiting for the other boy to say something.

“I’m really tired, George,” Clay yawned once again, “I’m sure you weren’t thrilled to have someone new on your project, but I think it’s super close to being done,” Clay was leaning his weight on the right armrest of his desk chair, forehead in his palm. 

Well, Dream had him pinned, he _hadn’t_ wanted the help, but it was nice to have someone else to test the code with, and George would admit he’d had fun while doing it. 

“You know, I didn’t mind the help Dream…” George let his mind trail away from his words.

“I think I should head to bed now, I’m about to pass out in my chair,” It wasn’t far from the truth, Clay could feel his body getting heavy and eyelids drooping. 

“Alright, goodnight, Dream. Thanks for the help,” A gentle smile graced George’s lips.

“Night, George.”

And with that, they disconnected the call. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got so domestic so quickly, but I felt like it was deserved after three chapters of anticipation. 
> 
> I wanted them to have a naturally chill first interaction, mostly because I get such bad second hand embarrassment
> 
> _______
> 
> Also, my updates are random because I just write at every opportunity, but expect a new chapter most likely within four days (at most probably) of the last
> 
> Feedback appreciated!! Love you<3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day after the call, the boys are in two very different places.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter contains description of mild panic, it's relatively short but I put *** where it begins and ends :)
> 
> This chapter also contains some language as well!
> 
> Here's chapter five folks!

_ “I think I should head to bed now, I’m about to pass out in my chair,” It wasn’t far from the truth, Clay could feel his body getting heavy and eyelids drooping.  _

_ “Alright, goodnight, Dream. Thanks for the help,” A gentle smile graced George’s lips. _

_ “Night, George.” _

_ And with that, they disconnected the call.  _

____

For once, Clay wasn’t awake before the sun was up. He woke slowly, sunlight peeking through the slightly parted beige curtains that hung around the bedroom window. The quilt on his bed was around his ankles, leaving his bare chest exposed to the cool air of the bedroom. 

Clay stretched before swinging his sweatpants covered legs over the edge of the bed. With bare feet, he padded down the hallway to the upstairs bathroom down the hall. 

Clay wasn’t sure what time it was, but it had to be later than ten or eleven o’clock- he couldn’t hear his parents on the first floor so he assumed they had probably gone to work already. 

The blond flicked on the lights of the bathroom, blinking at the sudden brightness. 

His reflection stared back at him, he reached up to ruffle the fluffy mess of blond hair on his head. Clay took in the sight of his disheveled hair, his eyes flitted down his chest and stomach, pausing at the word written above his hip bone, just barely visible above the low hanging sweats. 

His fingers glanced over the formal font,  _ George _ , what are the chances that a random coder dude was his soulmate? But what if… 

God, he’d only actually spoken to the guy once, why was he thinking so much into this?

It wasn’t like he’d actually be with a guy anyway, not if his dad had any say in things. 

Clay realized he had been staring with vigor at his own face, like he was looking for answers in his own brain. Well...maybe he was.

Ruffling his hair once more in an attempt to push the near-bangs out of his face, Clay inspected his face once more, taking in the tired look in his eyes before making the trek back to his room, forgetting why he had even gotten out of bed in the first place, it wasn’t like he was going to do anything worth while anyway.

Clay laid back down in bed, he probably wouldn’t go back to sleep, but he could screw around on Twitter until he found the motivation to do something productive.

____

George was totally awake when Bad called him, he definitely wasn’t scared awake by the call tone coming through the headset that was halfway on his head, definitely not. 

See, George never went to bed last night. He was going through the code and trying to fix the small mistakes that he and Dream had found during the testing. He figured that with his nap he’d be able to make it through the whole process. Turns out, his sleep schedule had a different idea. 

On the monitor, the code still lit up the screen, George reoriented himself in his chair, he had slumped down a fair amount and was leaning on the right armrest of the chair. He righted the headset on his ears, tabbing out of the code and over to Discord where the call sound continued.

Without looking at the name he answered, “Hey?” George probably sounded like he had swallowed cardboard with his sleepy voice, overused from the chase with Dream last night. 

  
“Hi, George!” a bright voice answered, it was Bad. 

George tried to act a bit more alive than he felt, “Oh, hi Bad,” he rubbed his palms over his eyes, sitting up farther in the chair. 

“Hey! So how’s the project going? Dream told me you guys had scheduled a time to work on it.” Bad’s voice was nasally as ever, it was kind of endearing in a way. 

“Yeah, yeah. We actually spoke last night, we got most of the work done, it should be done soon, actually,” George, tapped away at the keyboard, half paying attention to the call, half scrolling through a few rogue lines of code.

“Oh, that’s awesome, George,” he could tell the other man was smiling just by the tone of his voice. He’d known Bad for so long now that he could read his emotions just by the sound of his voice. He was elated to hear that the other man seemed to be happy with his work, George wanted to do well for his first real project on the server.

“Thanks, Bad. I’ll send you the final product when I’m finished with it,” George smiled softly. 

“Oh, hi Rat!” George heard a slight jingling, supposedly ‘rat’, it sounded like some jangling dog tags.

“Well, good luck finishing the code, I need to go let my doggy out, so bye George~” 

Bad dragged the name out in his departure before ending the call. 

Just a bit more work before the game would be ready for the server.

____

The day crawled on slowly for Clay, with no obligation to do summer school work, he really had nothing to do. 

Clay lazed around the house for most of the day, he almost continues work on his piece of shit code, but he decided he didn’t want to deal with the frustration when it wasn’t quite right. He was leaning against the headboard of his bed, pillows stacked behind him as he scrolled through his grades on the laptop on his outstretched legs. 

Mostly failing grades on the work he actually did, let alone what he didn’t, not far from what Clay had expected. Clay whizzed by missing assignment after missing assignment, he was never going to do them. 

High School was bullshit anyway.

____

George was so close to finishing the game completely. Everything was good except about a few lines that needed to be cleaned up and edited, it would only be another twenty minutes at most. 

He messaged Bad.

_ George: I’m almost finished with the code, I’ll send the link over in about half an hour :) _

He hoped the other man was awake for this huge accomplishment. Nearly a month of working on this code virtually alone (until yesterday that is) he wanted Bad to see it as soon as it was finished.

George contemplated messaging Dream, he would probably want to know that the code was almost finished, right?

George clicked over to his messages with Dream.

_ George: Hey, just wanted to let you know that the code is almost finished _

After a moment, George added one last message.

_ George: thanks for the help  _

George got back to work on the code, continuing to scan through the lines.

____

After a bit of looking through his missing assignments and some self deprecation, Clay, out of frustration, had slammed the screen of the laptop shut. He was miserable enough not knowing what his grades were, there was no use making it worse actually looking at the outcome of the lack of effort.

It was about three o’clock now, Clay hadn’t even realized that he never ate lunch, let alone breakfast. He had been staring blankly at the Twitter app on his phone, not quite focusing on anything in particular, just...thinking. 

Clay slid across the bed, once again, bare feet on the cool floor. He pocketed the phone, stiff legs hobbling down the stairs and to the kitchen. Clay wandered onto the tile floor of the kitchen. The blond swung both refrigerator doors open, looking lazily at their contents. 

Clay finally settled on a bag of pizza rolls shoved in the back of the freezer. He grabbed a plate from the cabinet above the counter, dumping the frozen food onto the plate and shoving them uncerimoniously into the microwave. 

He set the timer, leaning back on the counter as the microwave hummed. 

Clay felt a buzzing against his left leg, he reached for his pocket, only sort of trying to fish it out of the cloth confines. 

A Discord notification had popped up on the lockscreen. Clay unlocked the phone, opening the app to find a message from none other than George.

_ George: Hey, just wanted to let you know that the code is almost finished _

_ George: thanks for the help  _

Huh, truthfully, Clay wasn’t sure he was going to hear from George again. Honestly, he had thought that their work together would be a one and done thing. 

Clay’s thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of the microwave. 

Forgetting about the message, Clay went straight for the food. A slight burning smell was released when the microwave door was opened, he really couldn’t care less. 

He grabbed the plate and his phone, trudging off towards the living room. The plate was beginning to burn the tips of his fingers, so he shuffled faster through the doorway, narrowly avoiding the coffee table before setting the plate on the side table and dropping gracelessly onto the leather sofa. 

His phone lay forgotten in the crease of the cushions while Clay grabbed one of his mom’s decorative couch pillows, they weren’t really supposed to be used but who puts pillows on a couch if they’re not allowed to be touched?

Clay adjusted the pillow on his lap to place the hot plate on top of, he didn’t want to have a burnt dick, could you blame him?

Finally getting into a position that would protect his lap from the boiling plate and still let him eat, he carefully lowered the ceramic onto the overly decorative pillow. 

Clay nibbled thoughtlessly on a pizza roll, today was bleak, Clay felt...numb.

He had days like this sometimes, no motivation to do anything- he would sink into the couch and not move for hours if he could. Not happy, not sad, just existing. He convinced himself it was the work getting to his head, but it wasn’t like he did work anyway. You could hardly count monitoring a Minecraft chat as “work”. 

Sometimes Clay wondered what would happen if he just left. Left home, left Florida, hell, maybe even leave the damn country for that matter. He was useless here, he didn’t have the same plans as his parents (finish college, find a nice girl, settle down with a nice job, and start having grandkids) Clay wasn’t even sure he was finishing high school at this point. At this very moment, he had summer work that should have been finished months ago for the school he had skipped last semester. School would start in under a month and Clay would turn eighteen, starting later meant he got to be the oldest in his class, hoo-rah, the oldest and the worst student of them all.

In his train of thought, Clay didn’t notice that the base of his palm had been resting on the edge of the plate. Right under his left palm, the bracelet had been pushed down to expose the lettering there and the rim of the plate had left a bright red line through the name.

~~_ Georgie _ ~~

The pain didn’t really register, Clay just kind of stared at the mark on his wrist, half a pizza roll in his mouth still. 

It was going to be a long day.

____

The code was finished, after two (multiple) final look throughs, George could confirm that he was finished. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been more proud of something he’d created, it was like his own child- but better. 

With that, he sent the code to Bad.

It had been an hour and Dream still hadn’t responded to his message, even though Discord said he was online, maybe he had fallen asleep in front of his monitor like a certain someone George knew. 

____

Clay had finished his pizza rolls, now the ache in his stomach had eased and he sat satiated on the sofa, playing with the ruffles on the decorative cushion in his lap. 

He was getting fidgety. Unfocused and unable to stay still, his hands shook slightly as his fingers danced over the rippled fabric. He got like this if he got too far into his head, and he definitely had. 

Clay had been thinking about something his father had told him when he was younger, something about the “fucking gays” and how unnatural it was, he wasn’t sure what brought up the memory, but before he knew it, Clay had sent himself spiralling in thought.  _ What was gonna happen if he didn’t cover the names on his body? Or when he didn’t bring home a sweet and pretty girl within the next few years? _

***

The more he thought about it, the more he panicked. He could feel his chest getting tight, he wanted to rip the skin off of his arms, he fidgeted, limbs stiff and unwilling to give into the panic, it was like his body had shut itself down.  The more he tried to manually slow his breathing down, the more his body tried to contest and speed his lungs even further. 

He couldn’t do this, his vision was spotty with the amount of oxygen he was taking in. Last time this happened, his mother found him curled in on himself in the corner of his bathroom, something of a panic attack he supposed. 

***

Clay fished his phone out from where it had fallen between the couch cushions, he wondered if Sapnap was awake. 

Sap was his best friend who lived in Texas. They had met through a mutual friend’s Discord server a few years back and had been inseparable ever since. Sapnap probably knew him better than he knew himself and they’d never even met in person. 

Clay scrolled through his Discord contacts before finding the Sapnap’s name.

He needed to hear his friend’s voice, anything to get him out of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting angsty folks, you can probably tell where this is going...0.0
> 
> i love you and thanks for reading <3
> 
> feedback appreciated, love ya!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay is having a panic attack, he needs to hear his friend's voice to get him out of his head. Let's hope he hits call on the right contact...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW//Some description of panic, mostly breathing and heart-rate related!!

_ Clay scrolled through his Discord contacts before finding the Sapnap’s name. _

_ He needed to hear his friend’s voice, anything to get him out of his head. _

____

Clay drifted over the contact name, in a moment of hesitation. _ What if he was busy? Or didn’t want to talk?  _ It had been a week or so since they’d spoken- Sapnap had been busy with a new job and Clay had just never reached out.

He swallowed his pride, and with unfocused eyes thumbed over the contact and hit call. Listening to the call sound ring, Clay tucked his legs up onto the couch, leaning his weight on the right armrest and holding the phone up to his right ear. Tears pricked in his eyes, vision still spotty but a bit better, his lungs ached with overuse, and his hand holding the phone shook slightly. 

After a minute, the ringer tone paused for a voice to come through the speaker.

“Hello?”

____

George was making dinner in his kitchen, humming lowly under his breath while he pushed around the eggs on the stove. He swayed a bit on his sock feet as the eggs crackled and popped in the pan. It was quiet in the apartment, seven p.m. was pretty lonely when you lived solo. 

The peace was interrupted when George’s phone began to buzz on the countertop. George turned the burner off, moving the eggs off of the heat before meandering over to the cell vibrating on the counter top. 

He assumed it was his mother, she tended to call every once in a while and George didn’t really have anyone else that would call rather than text.

He lifted the phone to his ear, mumbling into the receiver, “Hello?”

____

If Clay had been having difficulty breathing before, well, he definitely wasn’t breathing now. A voice came through the speaker…that wasn’t Sapnap,  _ who the hell did he call? _

Clay couldn’t force his lungs to work.

“Um…hello?” the voice repeated, sounding a bit confused.

_ Holy shit, he called George. _ None of his other Discord contacts had accents like his.  _ Oh shit.  _ The blond tried to take a breath, and calm himself enough to answer the man on the other side of the phone. 

“I-I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you,” Clay hoped he didn’t sound as weak as he felt. His face was wet with silent tears and he had lost control of his breathing again, he hoped it wasn’t audible through the receiver.

____

George pulled the phone away from his ear, his eyebrows furrowed as he listened to the heavy breathing coming through the phone. He glanced at the caller name,  _ Dream? Why was Dream calling him, why did it sound like he was crying? _

George listened as the other man stuttered into the receiver, rasping breaths falling out between words.

“Dream?” George wasn’t sure what to say, the other man was obviously having some sort of problem with the way he was gasping for air.

“I’m-” Dream was interrupted by a hiccupping sob, “I’m sorry, George, I didn’t mean to call you…” His words dwindled, George couldn’t hear whether or not he was still speaking. George’s brows furrowed, there was definitely something wrong, but Dream said he hadn’t meant to ring him, so should he try to help or just let the other man suffer? The answer was pretty obvious.

“Dream…” George didn’t want to sound harsh or rude, he’d only really spoken to the guy once. George mustered up the words to continue, “Dream, what’s wrong?” It was vague enough George thought, he wouldn’t have to be specific if he didn’t want to.

____

The question stilled Clay a bit, should he answer or hang up and call Sapnap like he had originally intended? Clay pondered over the possibilities in the midst of his panic, hearing a voice that wasn’t his own had given him a second to breathe. Maybe speaking with George wouldn’t hurt…  _ Wait what was the question again? _

Who knows how long the line had been quiet, but regardless, Clay finally replied smartly, “Huh?”

The response was immediate, “Is something wrong, Dream?” George’s voice was serious, but not stern.

Clay pushed the air out of his lungs once more, heart beating manically in his throat, “I…I think I’m having a panic attack~” He was stopped by another wracking gasp. 

“Okay, okay…” George wasn’t quite sure what to do, he’d seen people need physical touch during a panic attack to ground them, but being through the phone...well that was pretty self explanatory.

“What can I do, Dream?” He was truly clueless here, but he wanted to do what he could.

“Can- Will you just…talk? It’s distracting,” Clay squeezed out, his throat was constricting as he tried to hold back the sobs trying to crawl from his mouth.

“Yeah, I can talk, I can do that,” George tried to conjure up a topic. He cleared his throat before launching off in thought, “Well, I managed to finish the code, and I just sent it over to Bad a few hours ago. It all looked pretty good after we tested it. It was kinda funny, actually, I tried to stay up and work on it, but I ended up falling asleep in my desk chair last night.”

Clay listened quietly, silently noting the lilt in George’s accent while he spoke. He was dynamic and bright even though the topic was pretty mundane. He hummed at the mention of falling asleep in the chair. Clay maneuvered his legs to the side, sliding down on the couch and leaning back against the armrest, he tucked one leg under himself and let the other stretch out toward the other end of the sofa. His breathing had taken a brief intermission from panicking but the heartbeat in his chest still thundered onward. 

“-I still had my headset on when he called so it startled me awake, I nearly fell out of my chair,” George chuckled at his own stupidity. “But since then, I hung out on Munchy for a bit and played some games, I was just making dinner when you called…” George wondered if Dream was still listening, regardless, he decided to continue with the task he had been given, “I was making eggs but they smell kind of burnt now so I’m not sure if I’m going to eat them. I’m not a very good cook, but I had the food and figured I might as well try to not be useless for once,” This did earn a small smile from Clay, breathing almost normal now, but he could still feel his pulse moving a bit too fast for comfort.

George paused his slight ramble to ask, “Are you feeling any better, Dream?” 

Clay took a moment to evaluate. Breathing: better, heartbeat: definitely there, level of panic: still present but less pressing for the moment. He supposed that listening to George talk had helped. “Yeah, I think so, I feel less like I’m going to suffocate in my own panic,” Clay tried to crack a joke but he wasn’t sure whether or not it landed, what with the still slightly teary voice and raspy breathing.

“Wanna talk about it?” George let the words slip out of his mouth without his consent. He grimaced at the statement hoping it didn’t come out wrong.

“I guess I just got super in my head, I think too much sometimes…” George opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted. “You know how I don’t go to school, right?” Clay didn’t wait for a response. “Well, if I manage to graduate I have no plan for my life. Everything is just happening so fast,” Clay wasn’t sure why he was telling this to George, it was probably too much information to give out to random online people, but it was happening regardless. “I kind of want to move out of my parents’ house and never come back…”

George didn’t know whether or not it was his turn to speak at this point. Did Dream want advice or did he just want someone to vent to? George was terrible at things like this.

Clay sighed, and shrugged back into the couch, it was true, he would go somewhere new and never look back, but as much as he wanted to, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave his parents. He definitely wasn’t going anywhere if he continued not doing schoolwork, that was a problem for later though.

Clay thought he should probably try to culminate the conversation, now that he wasn’t panicking he was beginning to feel the embarrassment creep up his cheeks.

The other side of the line was quiet, Clay had sort of word vomited to George.

George really wasn’t sure what to say…he wanted to comfort(?) the other boy but he really wasn’t sure how to. 

“Dream-” he started. 

At the same time, Clay blurted, “I-”

Then simultaneously, “You go-” and “You first”

They were both quiet for a moment, “Sorry for accidentally calling you, George, I hope you weren’t, like, busy or anything.”  _ Wow way to sound like an asshole, Clay.  _

George leaned back against the kitchen counter, cool through the thin fabric of the shirt. “It’s okay, are you feeling better, at least?” George hoped he had at least been a decent friend.

_ Friend? Were they friends? _

“Yeah, yeah, I guess. Just needed to distract myself, I’m about to be a senior in high school and it sucks. I really wish my parents would let me finish online but they think that if I start online I’ll just drop out completely.”

  
  
  
  


“Y’know, Dream, we don’t know each other well, but I would honestly suggest just getting through high school and don’t worry about the future until you’ve finished this year.” George tried to think back to high school, he didn’t hate it necessarily, more like he just suffered through it until he didn’t have to anymore. To be fair, George knew he wanted to get into coding from a young age, it sounded like Dream had no idea where his life was going. But George couldn’t judge, he was nearly twenty one and rarely left the house. Oh well, to each their own.

“Yeah, I guess. If I can convince my parents to let me finish online, I can guarantee my anxiety would be one hundred percent cured, I really want to take more computer science classes instead of, I don’t know, history or some shit. It’s not relevant so I have no drive to do it.”

“Makes sense,” George said, a little more to himself than to Dream, “I learned how to code watching YouTube for three years.” George smiled.

“Really? That’s what I’ve been trying to do but I get frustrated every time I screw something up,” Clay chuckled a bit. 

“The only reason I didn’t give up on coding was because I was too stubborn.”   
  


“Good to hear, I guess. Nice to know I’m not the only one.” Clay responded. “I really want to code some plugins for Minecraft to make the vanilla game harder, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I can actually form a coherent line yet,” Clay pushed his hair out of his eyes, running a hand over his face. 

“Interesting, I’ve thought about some things like that but never had the balls to go through with a project that big.” George was genuinely intrigued by the idea of making vanilla Minecraft more difficult, maybe a new project for them to work on?

There was a slightly tense silence for a few moments.

“Thanks, George, I really needed to get that out of my system.”

“No problem, Dream, anytime,”  _ Was this the part where he said goodbye? _

“I’m gonna go drink some water and have an hour or two of introspective thought,” Clay joked into the phone.

George wasn’t sure what introspective meant, but by the tone of Dream’s voice it seemed like he felt better at least.

“Alright, have fun introverting or whatever,” George replied.

Clay let out a full laugh at that, “Bye, George,” he said between breaths.

“Night, Dream,” it was night for him at least, maybe not for Dream. 

That was the second call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am planning for the timeline of their careers to be a bit different in this, so don't be alarmed if things aren't the same IRL...
> 
> Feedback is always welcome! I love to hear what you think or literally the first thing that comes to mind
> 
> Love you all<33333


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Panic attacks are exhausting
> 
> This chapter contains several instances of cursing!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gooday' folks, here's another chapter, I'm feeling hella inspired right now so here we go.

_ Clay let out a full laugh at that, “Bye, George,” he said between breaths. _

_ “Night, Dream,” it was night for him at least, maybe not for Dream.  _

_ That was the second call. _

____

George set the phone down on the countertop with a dull thud. He glanced over to the eggs still in the pan on the stovetop, slightly overcooked, nothing a little salt couldn’t fix. He had tossed a lid over the pan when he picked up the phone so luckily they were a bit warm still. George scraped the eggs out of the pan and onto the plate he had set to the side earlier, sprinkling salt over them scramble before shuffling into his living room. 

The brunet threw his phone to one side of the loveseat, sitting on one leg and letting the other dangle off the edge of the couch, his socked toes not quite touching the floor. 

George grabbed the remote off of the side table, flicking the TV on to some cartoon, just something to cut the silence and brighten the room a bit. He tried to dull the taste of the eggs with the flashing characters on the screen. The salt really didn’t help enough, George tried to swallow the eggs without tasting them but couldn’t help the grimace that settled on his face. This is what he gets for trying to be an adult. 

It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was beginning to slip below the horizon, the TV murmured quietly, babbling characters flitting around the screen. George set the empty plate off onto the side table, his mind was nothing but a quiet hum inside his head.

____ 

Clay felt much better after the call, not only mentally, but physically as well, like someone had scratched the itch inside his head and cleared the path from his mouth to his lungs. 

Despite the newfound peace in his mind and body -he was exhausted. 

Without a second thought, Clay wriggled himself farther down the couch, long legs stretched as far as the cushions would let him. He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep exactly, but within a short moment Clay was asleep on the sofa. 

____

  
  


George fiddled around on his phone for a while after he had finished his dinner. Scrolling through Twitter had never been so boring. George leaned onto his left hand, elbow resting on a stack of pillows to his left, head supported by his palm and the cushions. George glanced up from the soft glow of his phone to the illuminated crook of his elbow.  _ Clay _ . Ever since he was a toddler, the words had rested on the soft skin covering the muscles of his biceps.

George had known about soulmates since he was tiny, and his mother had always assumed the “Clay” would be a boy, it was only logical that George would end up at least bisexual. But regardless of his lack of preference, George had only had flings that lasted a few months at most, and always with girls for that matter. 

He had only ever made polite conversation with the only openly-gay person in the school. She was blunt about her soulmate, she had a blatantly female name just below her knuckles, the same knuckles that she used to punch anyone with anything rude to say about her soulmate. 

George had never been brave enough to spark up a conversation about their coincidence. Even though it was pretty hard to hide a name in the middle of your arm, especially when summer comes and everyone questions why you’re wearing short sleeves when it’s boiling outside. Not an easy feat to keep literal names tattooed on your body secret. Once word got out that George’s soulmate likely wasn’t a girl, well...things tended to spread fast.

Who cares, George was allowed to like dick.

But now, George lived alone, in the same apartment for nearly a year now and he was pretty spoiled. He now had no obligation to leave the house working completely online for a few coding businesses, and also some freelance work along the way to top it off. He really only left the house for groceries but that only happened every once in a while, delivered groceries were super convenient, could you blame him?

With no one around to see the names on his arms, he could wear whatever the hell he wanted and not have to worry about people asking questions. 

Sure there were plenty of people with names of the same gender on their skin, but God forbid anyone marry someone of the same gender (heavy sarcasm implied). People couldn’t mind their own damn business and go about their own lives, could they?

George would have liked to say that he couldn’t care less, but truly, people’s opinions terrified him, even when he didn’t show it. I guess all it takes is a bit of childhood trauma to ruin you for life, huh?

____

  
  
  


Clay blinked back into the real world when he heard the door leading from the kitchen to the garage open. By the sound of the shoes, his father was home from work. Clay’s dad marched into the living room like he was expecting to bust a party or something, the same stern look on his face as always. 

“Hi, Dad,” he mumbled out, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

“Hey, Clay, what you been up to?” his expression softened considerably when he saw the boy on the couch was barely awake. 

“Nothing productive,” Clay responded, “talked to a friend for a bit earlier.”

“Who?” the elder asked, pausing in the doorway.

See, Clay didn’t really think about this one, maybe shouldn’t have mentioned the “no-no name”.

“Oh, just George,” he said mindlessly, patting around the couch for his phone, not noticing the sudden change in expressions on his father’s face. 

“Clay?” his father had the no bullshit tone in his voice now. 

“Yeah?” the blond responded, still digging around in the cushions for the cell phone.

“George?” the man questioned. Finally looking up from his forage for his phone, Clay locked eyes with the older man

“Yeah, the coder that I had that call with?” Clay probably should have been able to tell where this was going, but well, it wasn’t exactly anticipated. 

Clay watched as his father buffered for a moment, almost chewing on his words before he spat them out, “Is he your soulmate?”

Well then, no bullshit today. 

The blond spluttered at the accusation, “What? He’s just a coder friend,” they were friends right? 

“Tell me the truth, Clay, why have you been talking to this boy?” the man was barely holding back the monster of rage threatening to burst out of him. 

This had happened two too many times now, Clay did what he did best, he fought back. “I’ve been talking to him because I got put to work with him on a project, I didn’t get to decide who I was working with, I had never spoken to him before two days ago!” Clay was frustrated now, standing from his stretched out position on the couch, he had about an inch or two on his dad, he hoped he looked threatening. 

“You know what I think?” his father started, “I think you’re lying to me,” the man’s menacing eyes dared the blond to retaliate and, well, Clay was never one to back down from a dare. 

“I-” Clay started, you know what, it wasn’t worth it, he couldn’t win this argument, not when his father despised him for things he had no control over. Clay spun on his heel, making a move toward the stairs a few meters away.

A hand latched onto his arm, he whipped back to look into the eyes of the owner of the palm latched to his wrist, “Don’t you walk away from me,” that was a voice that would have made Clay, on any other day, back down, but today wasn’t one of those days. 

“You wanna know something? I was having a panic attack earlier and you know who fucking helped me? George, George helped me. Now fucking let go of me,” Clay wouldn’t be surprised if he earned a slap to the face for his mouth, but he didn’t care anymore. 

“What are you? Some kind of pussy, having a panic attack?” his father laughed at the idea of his son having a panic attack. 

Clay was enraged, “Well, you were the fucking cause of it! I hate it here! As soon as I can, I’m packing my shit and getting the fuck out! As far away as I can get from you.” With that, Clay ripped his arm from the now loose grip on his wrist, bolting up the stairs while his father sat gaping like an ugly dying fish. 

Clay slammed the door to his bedroom, rattling the picture frames in the hall outside the door. 

The boy let out a muffled yell as he ran his hands through his hair, his pillow had fallen on to the floor, without a second thought, Clay punted it to the other side of the room, it bounced innocently off of the wall and landed idly on the floor. 

He paced for a few more moments before deciding he needed to get out of the house. 

Clay slid on a scuffed and dirt stained pair of shoes and a light jacket, stuffing his phone into the pocket of his jeans. He took a breath, ready to walk straight past his father if he did run into him. He pulled the door open, shutting it not so quietly behind him before he stomped down the stairs and straight to the front door. He could have gone for a drive, but it would probably be better if he got some air right now.

He marched to the front door, slamming it behind him, his father had to know he’d left the house, whether or not he cared was the question. 

Clay embraced the cooler air, sliding on the jacket to break the less than warm breeze. It was calming to feel the air flow into his lungs, refreshing even. 

Clay broke into a brisk walk down the sidewalk, no direction in mind, just getting away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy again! 
> 
> I love reading your comments so tell me anything
> 
> We're a bit angsty here but it's gonna get fluffy in the near future :DDDD


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay needs to get out of the house, where does he go? A coffee shop of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter eight !!!

_ He marched to the front door, slamming it behind him, his father had to know he’d left the house, whether or not he cared was the question.  _

_ Clay embraced the cooler air, sliding on the jacket to break the less than warm breeze. It was calming to feel the air flow into his lungs, refreshing even.  _

_ Clay broke into a brisk walk down the sidewalk, no direction in mind, just getting away. _

____

Clay felt a bit warm under the weight of the hoodie and the redness that had most definitely spread across his face. He unzipped the jacket and pushed the sleeves up to his elbows, setting off along the side of the road. The blond reached up to push the too long hair out of his face and off of his forehead. 

He didn’t have anywhere particular in mind, maybe the library downtown? He could have a good excuse to not talk to people if he didn’t want to

…  Eh, he’d figure it out when he got there.

The downtown area consisted of several plazas connected over a few blocks, including some small restaurants and shops along with some other city buildings. Maybe he could hole up in a coffee shop for a few hours or something.

Clay scuffed his shoes over the concrete, it was the only noise besides that occasional car passing to his left. He trudged along the street side, allowing the noise of passing engines to dull the anger radiating through his skull. 

The teen found himself at the end of his street, now onto one of the larger roads in town, he took a right turn and continued down the sidewalk, traffic growing heavier to his left. Clay continued on the pavement, crossing business driveways and some smaller roadways on his journey further into downtown. At a large intersection, he paused, now to decide where to go. If he kept going straight he would end up in a mainly residential part of the city, if he crossed the street and went left he would go down a less busy part of town and spit out near some shops and small workplaces. 

Clay chose the latter, watching as the red hand over the crosswalk changed, he broke into a light jog to clear the four lanes. He slowed back to a brisk walk once he reached the other side, a downhill slope to a shopping district.

He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, trying to find somewhere to put his anxiety-fueled fingertips, they settled in the pockets, but it wasn't long before he was pulling them out again to pop his over-stressed knuckles -it was a bad habit, and if he had arthritis in thirty years then he might regret it, but right now, he couldn’t keep his hands still. 

This road was less busy, a smaller connection between two of the busiest parts of town, being in an inconvenient location in a sketchier part of the neighborhood gave it a high avoidance rate with the locals. 

Clay didn’t care enough to avoid this particular area of town, what was anyone going to do to a six foot three guy anyway? Clay definitely looked like he could tackle someone if he wanted to, not that he would, but you know… the principle. Regardless, it meant people left him alone, kids at school, strangers in shops, those floor clerks that follow you around at the mall and try to guilt you into buying shit that you don’t want, yeah, Clay got left alone. 

He didn’t actually mind all that much, he wasn’t a super social guy anyway, at least not in person. He’d never let anyone see the names on his body, that was for certain. Sure, Clay had girlfriends earlier in high school, but they didn’t last long. He wasn’t a super reciprocal person if it wasn’t someone he truly liked.

Block after block, Clay walked. Crossing one lane streets and passing by short alleyways between houses. After a bit of traveling, the neighborhood opened onto another large road. The blond looked to his right once he reached the crosswalk across another four-lane, lazily jabbing a knuckle at the crossing button. 

He watched once again as the red hand changed to a white-lit figure, taking wide strides to cover the asphalt. Out of the corner of his eye, Clay spotted a small café, tucked in between a bookstore and quilting shop in a strip off the side of the road. That would work. 

_ Shit, I don’t have money.  _ Clay paused outside of the plaza, patting down his pockets in what seemed to be a futile attempt to find some change that would allow him to at least hang out for a little while without the fear of getting kicked out. 

He stuffed his hands in his front pockets in one final attempt to scrounge up a dollar or two. He felt rough paper on the fingertips of his left hand.  _ Bingo. _ Clay pulled his prize out of the depths of his pocket. HIs eyes were rewarded with a crumpled ten dollar bill, there were perks to wearing dirty jeans, you know.

Treasure now in hand, Clay tugged on the metal handle, and stepped into the café. 

The air inside was about the same temperature as the outdoors, just on this side of cold. A counter took up the corner to the right of the entrance, a register and barista stood at one end while several machines and ingredients occupied most of the space. Closer to the girl at the register sat a display filled with various pastries, breads, cakes, and cookies. The shop was lit up in a warm glow of yellow light and had a very neutral and warm color scheme, quite a shift from the dull gray sky. 

Clay had passed by this place a few times before, but had never been inside. It was nice, comforting even. It almost made Clay forget about the ever-looming crisis he was currently having, almost. 

Clay glanced around the rest of the shop, taking in the small amount of chairs and tables scattered around. In the back left corner sat a set of two chairs, a dark colored table between them, along with a few booths. Plants dotted table tops and really anywhere there was empty space, leafy vines crawled across every available surface. 

“Hi, how can I help you?” the barista finally chimed in, a bored tone prominent in her voice. She was a plain looking blonde, probably what people would describe as pretty, Clay thought. On her face was a classic “customer service” smile, trying to make it seem like she wanted to be there but in reality she probably wanted to tell him to fuck off, but fair enough. 

Clay shuffled toward the counter, rumpled bill still in hand,  _ what did he want?  _ “Can I get a large black tea?” he asked, voice rough and quiet. 

“Will that be all for you?”

“Uh… Can I get whatever that is?” Clay pointed to a pastry in the case.

“That’s a raspberry pastry, that alright?” she replied.

“That’s fine,” Clay gave a small smile to the blonde, trying to melt the ice in the obviously tired conversation.

“Your total is three-ninety eight.” 

Clay forked over the rumpled bill, smile turning into a slightly ashamed grin.

She flattened the bill and handed back several dollars and a couple of coins.

“It’ll be ready at the other end of the bar,” the barista gestured to the other worker that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere and was setting to work on the tea. 

Clay stuffed his hands in his hoodie pockets alongside his cell as he watched the barista take the pastry from the case and set it on a plate at the end of the counter, a moment later the sound of a cup clinking the marble counter sounded through the near empty restaurant.

Clay made eye contact with the barista that seemed to have materialized behind the counter, she gave him a sweet smile, “Here’s your order,” she had a mid-range voice, clear and bright as she spoke. 

He finally took in her presence, she was a relatively tall brunette, hair pulled back in a ponytail, this worker at least looked like she wanted to be working here. 

The blond returned her pleasant look, thanking her quietly and taking the plate in one hand and mug in the other, making his way to one of the comfy looking chairs in the back of the café. He set the plate down on the table, gripping the mug tightly as he settled into the cushions and crossed his legs loosely as he sunk down into the squishy chair. 

He sipped at the drink in his hand, cringing a bit at the bitterness but deciding against getting up for sugar -too much work. 

Clay pulled his phone out of his pocket, no recent messages, not even from his father, he probably should have expected that… 

He took small sips of the tea, scrolling through Instagram distracted him from the less than pleasant tea. About halfway through his drink, Clay remembered the pastry he had ordered, leaning over the side of the chair, he grabbed the plate, picking up the rectangular tart and inspecting it before taking a small bite,  _ not bad _ , maybe he should come here more, it wasn’t bad, and being pretty quiet and out of the way wasn’t bad either, Clay could see himself spending some time here. 

Who knows how long Clay had sat there, but his tea was long gone and the pastry was nothing but crumbs at this point. When the brunette barista came from around the counter and over to where Clay was sitting he expected her to ask him to leave after he’d been loitering for so long. 

It was relatively shocking when the girl took off her apron and sat in the chair next to him. At this point, there was only one other person in the café, a college age student working on her laptop at a table on the other side of the room. 

“Hey, I’m Nicole,” she spoke, leaning towards Clay on the armrest of the chair, the same smile on her face as before.

Clay tried to return her politeness, “I’m Clay.”

It was tragically obvious how little Clay knew about talking to girls, or anyone for that matter.

“Nice to meet you, Clay. How’d you like the raspberry tart? It’s one of my favorites,” her voice was almost too sweet, like artificial sugar and overly sweetened coffee. 

Clay’s brain was buffering, he was mostly confused as to why he had been approached by this girl in the first place. 

“Yeah, yeah it was pretty good, I can’t remember that last time I ate a pastry, but I liked it,” he responded, clicking the power button on his phone and setting it down on his legs, facing more fully towards Nicole. 

“I’m glad you liked it,” it was like she couldn’t get out of customer service mode, it felt fake.

There was a moment of awkward silence between the two, Nicole seemed to be staring through him, eyes and voice bright as ever.

She broke the silence, “So, I get off work in about ten minutes, would you maybe wanna go out somewhere?” Oh wow, alright, that was quick. 

She probably saw the mix of panic and confusion that took over Clay’s face, her hopeful look turned sour at the expression on his face.  _ Way to let her off easy… _

“Yeah, that was probably really blunt and forward, I apologize,” she spoke, remorse evident in her face. Clay tried to manually adjust his face into a more digestible expression. 

“I- Nicole…” how does he say this in a way that doesn’t make him seem like an asshole? See sometimes -Clay’s brain just spits out words without considering the possible effects of them. This was definitely going to be one of those circumstances. 

“Uh-” Oh, God he was about to do this, “I have a boyfriend…” He hoped his face didn’t rat out his fib. 

Clay watched as Nicole went through the five stages of grief in less than ten seconds. Her mouth opened, and then shut again, and then opened, her eyebrows furrowed and a slight wrinkle appeared in her forehead. There was another moment of pregnant silence before she burst out laughing. 

“I- I’m so sorry,” she managed between giggles, “I hope I haven’t scared you away from the café with this.”

Clay couldn't help but let out an awkward laugh at the situation, he only hoped she wouldn’t ask about his non-existent boyfriend.

“Well, I’m sure your boyfriend is a lucky guy, again, I’m sorry for coming on to you so… strongly,” Nicole began to stand from the chair, picking up her apron and grabbing the dishes that Clay had left on the table.

Clay tried to manage through the lie, she was leaving, and Clay had been here for well over an hour now, it was probably about time he left.

He waited until she walked away, apron slung over her arm, mug and plate stacked in her hand, she gave one more sugary smile before she walked back to the counter and disappeared into the back.

Once Nicole was out of sight, Clay dropped backwards, slumping into the chair.  _ Why did he say he had a boyfriend? It wasn’t like she wasn’t pretty, and she was obviously trying to hit on him?  _ That was probably an issue to deal with later on in life, now wasn’t the time for another crisis. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm now back at in person school so updates might be a little more infrequent, but I have full intentions of finishing this story!
> 
> Love you<33333
> 
> This chapter got way longer than what I usually go for but I like it:) I'm not sure what's better, more spaced out updates but longer chapters, or a bit more frequent and with 1.5k words or less? Let me know! I love feedback


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George get's a surprise visit from his mother, all is lovely, but something seems off...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9, lovelies!!
> 
> Here comes some George angst...

_ Once Nicole was out of sight, Clay dropped backwards, slumping into the chair. Why did he say he had a boyfriend? It wasn’t like she wasn’t pretty, and she was obviously trying to hit on him? That was probably an issue to deal with later on in life, now wasn’t the time for a crisis.  _

____

  
  


George had actually gone to bed at a decent hour for once, he had fallen asleep around midnight, phone still lying face up on the duvet, long dead. But now, George was startled awake by the sound of his apartment door opening.

_ What the hell?  _

George sat up, eyes bleary and brows furrowed at the noise. He didn’t process the implications of someone either opening the door or at least trying to. The brunet rubbed over his hands with the heel of his palm, as if trying to manually push away the fog in his mind. 

“George?” a voice rang from what sounded like the front of his apartment. It echoed through the quiet house. 

George slid off the edge of the bed, bare feet on carpeted floor. He stumbled towards his bedroom door, the voice called out again.

“George?” This time a little louder than before.

The twenty year old threw the door of his bedroom open, stepping into the hallway and trying to walk hastily into the kitchen on stiff legs. He rounded the corner, coming face to face with none other than his own mother, standing in the middle of his kitchen and looking prepared to yell his name once more.

“Oh, there you are,” her face flipped to form a smile.

“Hey, Mom,” George was too freshly awake to not sound like an ass, his voice was gritty and tired.

George’s mother took in the state of her son, hair a mess, wrinkled pajamas hung on his thin frame, eyes not even fully open yet. 

“Morning, Georgie,” she teased the boy.

“What- What are you doing here?” George’s accent slurred through his words.

“Well hello to you too, dear,” the woman looked around the kitchen, dirty dishes sat in the sink, the counter could definitely use a good scrubbing, but it was better than she had originally expected.

George rubbed once more at his eyes, before stepping closer to his mother. She held her arms open and he settled into the hug. 

“Hi, Mom,” he said once again, hugging back tightly. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m not happy to see you-”

He pulled back as his mother reached up, she combed down the messy hair with her fingertips, pushing the brown locks up and off of George’s forehead. She trailed her fingers down his face and onto his exposed collarbone, running over the exposed name there. 

_ Dream _

The same name that had been there for much of George’s life. 

It had been a long time since George had been touched this lovingly, _God, he was touch-starved._

“I missed you, so I stopped by,” she said nonchalantly like it wasn’t a two hour drive from her house to George’s apartment in Brighton.

“Alright, then,” George shrugged under the hands on his shoulders. George was taller than his mother, but only by a bit, he had been about five foot nine for the past three years, it didn’t look like things were going uphill anymore. “So do you want to get breakfast or something? I can get dressed,” George looked down at the blue plaid sweatpants on his legs, topped with a too big white shirt. 

“Breakfast? Dear, it’s noon!” she laughed once more at her son. 

“Is it? Then we can get lunch,” he offered in rebuttal. 

Without responding, George’s mom stepped backwards into the kitchen, opening the fridge and rifling through his cabinets. She shuffled through the sparse pantry. For what she was looking for, George wasn’t sure, but she began to set ingredients and seemingly random items from the kitchen onto the gray countertop. 

“I'm to make us lunch, you go put on some clothes, and we are going to clean up around your apartment and go get some groceries, yeah?” It was just as much a suggestion as a demand, George wasn’t sure why exactly his mother had shown up in his apartment, but maybe it wasn’t his place to press. He had nothing better to do, and the house could use a bit of scrubbing here and there. Why not. 

George nodded before walking back to his bedroom, stripping down to his boxers, he dug through the numerous drawers in search of some pants, he settled on a pair of light joggers, if he was going to do house work, there was no way in hell he was putting on jeans. He tugged on a clean t-shirt, stepping back into the hallway to trudge to the bathroom, George flicked on the light, white bulbs flooded the bathroom. 

His reflection showed off a mess of hair on his head, almost falling down into his eyes. He pushed the almost-fringe off of his eyebrows and into place just above his forehead. 

In the kitchen, George could hear his mother puttering around, it sounded like she had started on the dishes in the sink. The collar of the shirt was stretched enough that George could see the scrawling letters that his mother had run her fingers over just minutes before. 

_ How do you even approach the topic? “Hey, is your name Clay? ‘Cause I think you might be my soulmate?” or even “Do you, by any chance, have the name George anywhere on your body?”  _ Yeah that’s real likely to happen. 

George hoped that Bad would have his game on the server sometime soon, maybe he and Dream could screw around with it for a little while?

The brunet continued to think over the whole soulmate bullshit as he brushed his teeth. He would like to at least meet his soulmate at some point, even if it never grew to be anything, to even meet once would be nice, just for…closure.

He spared one more look at the letters on his clavicle, and tugged the collar of his shirt up to cover it more fully, huffing when the flimsy fabric didn't stay in place. He flicked the lights off, and made his way back to the kitchen where his mom had begun to scrub the dishes in the sink. 

“I’ll wash, you dry,” she spoke once she had noticed George had returned from the bathroom. 

Without another word, he took his place next to the sink, two towels laid on the counter, one to dry with and one to lay the dishes on. They settled into a quiet rhythm, the only sound came from the sink faucet and the occasional clink of ceramic and metal. 

There wasn’t a word spoken until the sink was emptied and scrubbed of any grime left behind. On the opposite side of the kitchen sat two sandwiches on a plate, he assumed they were probably made with what little bread and lunch meat he had left in his fridge, maybe a bit of cheese if he was lucky. His mother moved to grab the plate and offered George one of the sandwiches. They ate in silence until there was nothing left but crumbs, they weren't a family that needed words to ease tension. 

"I suppose we should get to work, eh?" the woman offered, kneeling down in front of the sink, she opened the cabinets underneath it. From the cabinets she pulled several bottles of cleaners along with sponges and rags.

“I see you’ve cleaned a lot,” she poked, raising an eyebrow at the nearly full bottles. George smiled shamefully, running a hand through his hair. “You’re lucky you’re a tidy person, otherwise this place would be a pigsty.” She set the numerous bottles on the counter, arranging them so she could see all of the labels. 

After a moment of inspection, she began to thrust bottles into George’s arms. 

“Counter tops,” she handed him a bottle, “glass,” what seemed to be blue liquid, “toilet, use the paper towels and the sponges, get to work, dear. I’ll start vacuuming.” There was no bite to her voice, everything was said with love, but this wasn’t her usual demeanor. See, George’s mother tended to clean when she was stressed or overwhelmed because she found the process soothing, so for her to drive all the way to his apartment to clean? Not normal. But George chose not to question it, and did as she said.  _ Might as well start with the bathroom.  _

George walked back to the bathroom, this time lugging along two armfuls of cleaning supplies. He dropped the load onto the bathroom countertop, picking up the blue liquid-filled bottle, he inspected it for a moment before shrugging and spraying the mirror liberally. George fell into a quiet work mindset, scrubbing and spraying as he went along, after not too long, the toilet was clean, mirror sparkling, tub scrubbed of grime, sink shining, and counter decluttered, organized, and then _re_ -organized. 

It was the nicest this bathroom had looked since George moved in. His shirt was a bit damp from the splashing, but the reward was worth it in the end. George peeled the damp tee away from his chest, gathering the cleaners and sponges and setting off in search of his mother. The vacuum sounds had stopped not long ago.

“Mum?” he called out into the quiet apartment. 

“In here, George!” she called back, it sounded like she was in his room…

He deposited the bottles back onto the kitchen counter, and then moved to push at the door to his own bedroom, barely noticing the newly vacuumed floors. The door was open, but only a crack, George pushed it open fully with the back of his hand. 

On his bed, sat his mother, in her hands was a picture frame that normally sat on George’s desk next to his computer. It was of him and his mom and dad, all smiling in front of a decorated tree and wearing pajamas on Christmas Eve. The smile on her face was filled with love and something George couldn’t quite digest… sadness? 

“Come sit, Georgie,” she spoke once she realized her son had entered the room, patting the bed next to herself.

George felt his eyebrows furrow at the lilt in her voice, boiling with anticipation and ready to burst from emotion. 

“What…” George didn’t finish his sentence, instead he sat gently on the bed next to his mother. 

“George, there’s something I need to tell you…” she set the picture frame next to her on the bed, turning to the left to face fully towards her son, looking directly into his eyes. 

“George, I went to the doctor the other day and had some tests done,” she saw the worry grow in her son’s eyes as his brows raised on his forehead, “The doctor found something, dear.

His heart was about to burst, he probably should have anticipated the next words out of her mouth, but his brain really wasn’t on the right track at the moment. His mind was roaring with fear, all he heard was the quiet breaths leaving his mother’s mouth.

“George, I have breast cancer.”

It was like a bucket of freezing water had been poured over his head. George’s heart pounded as his breath hitched in his throat.

“I need more tests done to see how far along it is… but it doesn’t look good,” she whispered, looking mournfully into George’s eyes, his mouth was parted slightly, like words were trying to climb out but couldn’t squeeze past the shock. 

With one wracking breath, he crawled into his mother’s arms, letting himself be held like a child as his mother whispered small words to calm him. He barely felt the tears running down his cheeks, but as his throat tightened around the sobs escaping his lungs, he could feel his face burning as he was cradled. His mother fought the tears threatening to overflow in her own eyes.

George was plummeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me crying at my own writing.... heh never....
> 
> I love your feedback, or just tell me anything! I like to hear from y'all<333


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long day for Clay, a really, really, long day. Could it possibly get any worse? Better maybe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER 10 BABY

_With one wracking breath, he crawled into his mother’s arms, letting himself be held like a child as his mother whispered small words to calm him. He barely felt the tears running down his cheeks, but as his throat tightened around the sobs escaping his lungs, he could feel his face burning as he was cradled. His mother fought the tears threatening to overflow in her own eyes._

_George was plummeting._

____

After the coffee shop incident, Clay had made his way home the direction he came, trudging up the busy streets, but uphill this time. True, it wasn’t fun, but at least it took some time and he was able to avoid home for a _bit_ longer. 

He had decided after the run in with Nicole that it was probably time to make a hasty escape from the café- which left him here, turning left onto his street and not-so-subtly dragging his feet along the pavement. 

When he reached his house on the street, the thing that caught his eye was his mother’s car in the driveway. _How long had he been gone?_ Long enough for his mom to come home from work at least, _and today would have been one of her late days_. 

Clay’s shoes scraped up the porch stairs and paused at the front door, one last inhale, and he pushed the door open: it was never locked when one of his parents were home. He shut the door quietly behind him, toeing his sneakers off in the front foyer. He listened into the quiet house for an inkling of where his parents might be. With socked feet he slid across the hardwood floor and into the kitchen to make his way towards the staircase and, hopefully, make it to his room unnoticed. 

Unfortunately, these plans were foiled the moment Clay rounded the corner from the hall entrance to the kitchen. He was stopped in his tracks at the sight of his mother and father both sitting at the dining room table, it seemed as though they had been whispering to each other, but were now staring straight at the newly entered blond, they looked quite similar to a couple of deer in headlights. His father’s laptop sat between the two of them on the tabletop, illuminating their faces in a soft white light. 

“Clay,” his mother sat up straighter in the chair, she was still wearing her work scrubs, “Come sit.” Her tone told him that now was probably not the time to screw around. The four-top table had four chairs, two on each of the long sides facing each other, his parents were in the ones closest to the wall, and the chairs were pushed close together as they hovered over the laptop screen.

Cautiously, Clay pulled a wooden chair out away from the table, sitting gingerly. He felt like prey with the way he was being watched by not one, but both of his parents. _Oh, great. What did he do now?_

Once he had settled in the chair, feet flat on the floor and hands limp on top of his legs. His eyes flitted from his mother, to father, and back, and he raised a questioning eyebrow. The silence was smothering, and Clay could feel his father’s seething eyes boring into his skull. 

In the lack of conversation, his mother flipped the laptop around to face her son. On the screen sat quite the list of… _oh shit_. Missing assignments. Yikes.

“I thought you said you had been getting your work done, Clay?” her voice was not something Clay had heard in a while, there was something there… sadness? Disappointment? Whatever it was, it was a kick to the stomach for Clay, that was for sure. 

“I-” the blond started to speak, to defend himself maybe, but the words just wouldn’t come out. 

All he could see was the white screen and his mother’s upset face. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t seem like his father wanted to take part in this possible scolding (for the first time in a long time) instead, his face was relatively blank, and he was almost disenchanted with the situation at hand. 

“Do you know what this could do to your senior year, Clay?” It was almost like she was pleading for him to understand the severity. It wasn’t like Clay didn’t know how important it was, really, he just didn’t particularly care. He had tried time and time again to convince his parents to let him go online, but they had always argued that it would make him lazy and give him an excuse to stay on his computer all day. The concerns were valid, but he was much more likely to be productive if he could just get on his computer and get the work done rather than have to go to school. But his parents weren’t so easily convinced.

Ä gruff voice quite rudely interrupted the thoughts crawling through his head. “What’s the problem, Clay? What’s going on?” The question sure did sound genuine, but the dead look on the older man’s face gave away how little he cared. Clay couldn't help but grind his teeth together and raise an eyebrow at the man, but he was met with a sneer, one that his mother didn’t see. “You really need to get your shit together, Clay,” well there was the attitude that he expected. 

The young blond restrained himself from making a scene, rather, he crossed his arms over his chest and spoke firmly. “Let me do online school and I'll get my shit together,” his fingers formed quotations around the mocking words, narrowed eyes dared his father to make another comment.

It was his mother’s turn to chime in now, “Clay, we talked about online school…” True, this conversation had happened several times in the past, always with the same answer and a brushed off response, but now, Clay was going to fight for this. If his parents wanted him to finish school, he was going to do it his way.

“Yeah, we have talked about it,” he was getting defensive now, “but you don’t understand…” the look on his father’s face almost made him give up, almost. “I hate school, Mom. I don’t get along with anyone, I hate the teachers, it _sucks,_ ” he was basically pleading at this point, his palms were flat on the table at this point and he was leaning forward into the wood and he knew his face was letting loose all of the emotions he was feeling. 

All of the buildup of anger and frustration from earlier in the day and now this confrontation? He was over it.

“Clay, this is not a debate,” his father chimed in, voice bittersweet and poisonous, higher pitched like he was pacifying the argument rather than actually solving the problem. 

Clay’s head whipped toward the older man, “No, this is a debate. I am trying to explain what I think would be best for myself. Not you, not Mom, _me_ ,” he was speaking directly to his father now, nearly out of his chair in anger and clammy palms planted on the table as he held his weight off of the seat. 

“Why do you want to go online, Clay?” It was his mother’s voice now, stepping in and laying a brick wall between the two boys. Clay let his spine fit back into the wooden chair, and he took in his mom’s calm tone. She had her elbows resting on the edge of the table, hands folded together below her chin, looking thoughtfully at her son. What were the thoughts? Clay couldn’t tell, but there was definitely some deep thinking happening behind the light in her eyes. 

Choosing to ignore the taunt for a fight from his father, Clay turned his eyes to his mother. “I know myself, Mom. I know that if you give me the opportunity to do online school, I will get my shit together and graduate this year, I swear to you, Mom. Just give me a chance…” In truth, he wasn’t too proud that he wouldn't get on his knees and start _really_ begging, but he figured now was not the time, it almost looked like his mom was considering it? Kind of unexpected…

Clay watched as the woman’s eyes closed, she inhaled a long breath before letting it go again, lowering her hands to rest on the table. “I’ll make you a deal. You get done with all of the things you need for summer work before school starts, and I’ll let you try online. That gives you two weeks to get all of these done,” her voice was stern, but not unkind. Clay knew she cared, she wanted what was best for him, it was her job as his mother. He could respect that. What he couldn’t respect, was his father who was currently on the brink of pouting at the compromise made without his say. 

He can have a taste of what it’s like to be ignored. Serves him right. HIs eyebrows raised in surprise at how easily she had agreed, but he chose not to question it, lest she change her mind. Gotta quit while you’re ahead. 

He scooted the chair back away from the table, a screech from the chair legs on the floor echoed through the stiff room. His father was silent, face hard and stale due to the fact that he had been completely ignored in the discussion. Clay stood without a word, “Thank you, Mom,” he said, trying to sound as genuine as he could muster. He was going to make the most of this opportunity, he was also going to run as far away as he could from the inevitable outburst that would come from his father any second now.

With this small win secured, Clay felt better than he had in days, months probably. He bounded up the stairs with newfound optimism and pushed open the door to his room where he flopped into the desk chair. Clay was having quite the time processing all of the events of today. From an accidental call with George, to storming out of the house, to the coffee girl, and the dining table confrontation… his brain was struggling to catch up. 

He slumped down in the seat, elbows bearing his weight on the armrests at his sides. His legs pushed the chair as he swiveled from left to right and back again. He finally took a moment to decompress and let his thoughts fly by his brain. 

Issue number one, accidentally calling George and making a fool of himself, hopefully the older man didn’t think he was too out of whack. Issue two, his father and his unfortunate diagnosis of being a huge dick, not really Clay's fault, but still an inconvenience nonetheless. His third problem, the coffee girl, he didn’t really feel bad about turning her down, but the way he turned her down… maybe that was something to put on the backburner for now. But finally, the mountain of work that he had made the commitment to finish. 

He was going to grind those assignments out, one way or another. He had made the promise to both his mother and himself, if he truly wanted to do online he was going to get his shit together and get work done. 

Clay cracked his knuckles and booted up his PC, pulling up the list of missing assignments, he stopped himself from shutting down the browser there and then at the length of the page in front of him, _man up dude,_ _no mercy for quitters, I’m getting my shit together._

He opened the first project, calculus…disgusting. But, no time like the present, and without further contemplation, Clay got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew y'all I wrote this in the beginning of a migraine but I'm so glad I got it out
> 
> I love to hear from you so tell me anything:D
> 
> ILY<3
> 
> ALSO we reached 2000 hits???? absolutely mental, thank you all so much!!!!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George doesn't know what to do with himself, it's like his brain has simply tuned out the problem at hand.
> 
> Clay? Well, he's getting his shit together. Just like he promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 11!!! 
> 
> Love you, babes

_Clay cracked his knuckles and booted up his PC, pulling up the list of missing assignments, he refrained from shutting down the browser there and then at the length of the page in front of him, no mercy for quitters, I’m getting my shit together._

_He opened the first project, calculus… ugh. Well, no time like the present, and with no further ado, Clay got to work._

____

George and his mother had sat together in silence long after she had dropped the news. Not a word had been spoken since- instead, George let himself be cradled into his mother’s chest, listening to her heartbeat as his breathing tried to steady out: from full sobs to the occasional stutter in his rhythm of breathing. 

“It’ll be okay, dear,” she spoke in a quiet voice, “I’m going back to the doctor later this week to run some more tests and get another scan. They aren’t sure how far along it is yet.” 

George took in a shaky breath and sat up to look his mother in the eyes, both of their cheeks wet with tears. “How long have you known?” he asked, George tried his best to keep his lip from quivering.

“About a week now,” she replied, a small sniffle followed her words. 

George processed the words for a moment, considering the timeline along with the diagnosis. Then George remembered… just a few days ago, when she had called and invited him along for dinner, he had declined because of the call with Dream. _Fuck, she was probably going to break the news then._ He couldn’t have controlled his schedule… but he had most likely forced his mother to hold off on telling him. 

“Is that why you were in the city the other day, the doctor?” Now his lip _did_ quiver as he spoke. The weakness in his voice was far from intentional.

She looked down into his eyes and stroked her fingers through his hair, “Yes,” she was certain. “Your father and I wanted to tell you together, but I just couldn’t hold off any longer,” she continued running her fingers through her son’s dark locks, to calm both George and herself. 

“I’m sorry I turned down dinner,” he had never felt guiltier, except for maybe the time that he smashed his grandma’s fancy vase, but that was only slightly worse than this. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay. You have a job and a life, I understand.” The flow of tears had stemmed for the moment. She had always been accepting of his passion for coding, and although she had been hesitant when George told her that he planned on working freelance, she let him. Even though she was rightfully concerned when he found a passion in Minecraft. His mother had let him follow his own aspirations, and she supported him fully once he got his feet under himself. 

“Your father was going to come with me, but he got called in for work last minute,” George sat up fully, no longer resting in the woman’s lap. She adjusted her weight on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles in the duvet with her fingers, avoiding eye contact with her son.

This wasn’t right, something was wrong.

____

Clay’s eyes were burning, he’d been staring at the computer monitor for upwards of four hours now, and he was about twelve assignments down the list. His fingers ached with over-use, but alas, he persevered. He had five classes to do work for, most of the history work was done, excluding an essay he had to write, but the early onset arthritis wasn’t worth getting it finished now. _One-fifth of the way done,_ ten o’clock now. It was probably time to call it quits for the day, the sun had set long ago and his parents had gone to bed. By the keyboard sat a half-stale bag of pretzels and a water bottle, the only thing fueling his work streak. This last chemistry lesson would take him less than half an hour, after that, Clay would feel content enough in his efforts to go to sleep. 

The blue-white glare from the monitor cast the room in a dull halo of light, his eyes sore with the amount of time sat in front of the harsh lights. Clay dug his knuckles into his eye sockets, just thirty more minutes and he could go to bed, just a bit more and he could be done. 

He opened the assignment, and skimmed the directions, he’d figure it out when he got to the problems. He scrolled. _Alright two page assignment, let’s get shit done._ He pulled a leaf of paper out of the stack he had nicked from his father’s office, scrawling the title in lazy writing in the margin.

The first problem: piece of cake, the second: easy peasy. Clay fell into a rhythm of equations, he probably looked on the brink of death, but he was eight problems in and nearly halfway through. His hand skittered over the page, not caring about neatness anymore, just with getting finished. Problems nine through twelve went by in a blur, the only evidence that Clay had was the fact that the answers were on the paper in front of him. The work he had completed in his four hour academic grind wasn’t difficult per se, it had all come quite easily to Clay. Had he kept up with the summer work as it had been assigned, he would have been able to maintain the work load no problem. But- you win some, you lose some.

The last few problems flew off of his fingertips with no effort. Clay didn’t bother scanning over the document to make sure his work was correct. Instead, he snicked open the binder on his desk, gracelessly stuffing the paper onto the prongs and slamming the cover closed. Clay closed all of the work he had open, shutting tab after tab on the browser screen. The blond rolled back from the desk, standing on stiff legs. He half waddled, half stumbled into bed, phone in hand. He dropped, almost face down, onto the quilt, wiggling under the covers and reaching over to his nightstand to grab the phone charger. If there were any notifications, Clay didn’t check them- his phone had died a few hours ago, and he was too far gone to scroll through Twitter notifications and see what non-interesting things had happened in the past few hours. 

Once he was comfortable under the blanket, Clay’s brain took the opportunity to go on holiday, a nice, long excursion from the real world, and he fell into a deep, restful sleep. 

It was easily the best he had slept in a long, long time.

He was awoken by the sun in his face. His eyes blinked open, fluttered, and then shut again. Clay pulled the quilt covering his chest over his face to block out the brightness, he buried his head into the pillow and burrowed further into the mattress. He must have fallen back asleep, because when Clay pulled the quilt away from his face. The sun was no longer slipping through the window, instead, it was nearly noon now, and the sun was well past the horizon.

Clay threw the blanket off his chest, he was sporting a wrinkled blue shirt and a pair of black sweatpants, one pant-leg was pushed halfway up his calf from moving around in the night, he shuffled to push it down. Clay ran a hand through his hair and cringed when it came back slightly greasy. _Ew._ He really needed to shower. 

The blond swung out of bed. The house was quiet other than the soft pitter-patter of feet down the hallway and into the bathroom. He flicked on the light and pushed at the mop of grease on his head, grimacing when it stayed in place where he had nudged it. He wasted no time starting the water. Discarding his shirt and sweats on the floor in the corner, Clay stepped under the spray before the water had even warmed up fully.

The blond hummed to himself as he wet his hair, the water was refreshing, and was successfully pulling from the tired state. He took time in scrubbing down his body and hair. Scouring his skin of the grime that had settled after sitting at a desk chair for a solid five hours the night before. 

Once he felt like an entire layer of skin had been shed with the amount of scrubbing, Clay shut off the water and stepped over the threshold of the shower. He grabbed his towel off of the wall, first rubbing it over his hair to dry it a bit, then wrapping it around his waist. The blond turned towards the fogged up mirror, examining his own reflection. He started at the dark blond hair on his head, almost brown while wet, that lay limply on his forehead, _he really needed a haircut._

He then let his eyes drift to the place they found so often, the top of his left hip-bone where the tiny letters rested, for his entire life, he had been marked by the name. It was a tag on his skin, a permanent one. 

What were the chances that he ever met his soulmate? Some random out there named George, who had the name _Clay_ on their own skin, out of seven billion fucking people, who’s to say that Clay would ever meet this person? 

But, the universe works in strange ways.

____

George went to bed that night solemn. He had forced himself to eat a few rice cakes before he went to sleep, but he couldn’t taste them. 

George was numb. 

His mother had left shortly after she dropped the news, claiming she had to be home for dinner with George’s father. Her words were clipped and concise as she left, in a hurry for that matter.

George had scrolled mindlessly through social media until the sun slipped away. When he had tuned back into the real world, the sky was dark and George decided he should probably eat something, even something small, after sitting in one place for several hours. After that, he lay in bed, trying to get his mind to think about anything but his mother and what could possibly come from this diagnosis. Eventually, dark eyes fell shut and his brain calmed down the inner monologue and reel of nightmares that came from the idea of cancer. 

It was a scary word, and most everyone had some sort of experience with it. Just the connotation of the word makes most people grimace or raise an eyebrow. Funny, how something so small: just a word, can change your entire life. Ironic.

____

Clay found himself in a pair of loose joggers and a sweatshirt in front of his computer monitor. He was clicking through and planning his academic expedition for the day. He wasn’t all too excited to keep on with the schoolwork, but Clay knew himself too well. If he didn’t force himself to do the work while he had available time and the motivation to get it done, then he would put it off until it was no longer relevant. It was exactly how he had gotten to four pages worth of assignments listed in front of him… 

He shuffled around to find the notebook he had designated for math work, reluctantly, Clay opened the first paper of the day. But he was feeling refreshed, newly cleaned, and recently fed (he had found a Pop-Tart hidden in the back of the pantry, it was a score) and now, Clay was prepared to get it over with. 

Clay scrolled past the directions listed at the top of the page, opting to figure it out as he went. He squinted at the words on his screen, _who the fuck said letters were allowed in math? Ridiculous._

The first problem could have been another language and Clay wouldn’t have known the difference, so reluctantly, he rolled his mouse back toward the top of the page to read the instructions, scowling at the lack of understanding. 

It was a good five minutes of trying to decipher what it was that the equation was asking of him, after all, Clay could not remember even a moment from any math class he had taken in his entire high school career, then again, that was probably why he nearly failed most of the courses… _New year, new me._

After some bored Googling to try and find a dumbed down video on the subject. The monitor in front of him made a soft pinging noise. A Discord notification scrolled in from the right side of his monitor. A message from Bad?

_BadBoyHalo: Hey, Guys! Good news, I just got the program implemented into the server! It’s going live in a few days but if either of you want to try it out beforehand, you have access!_

His eyes flickered over to the group members, and Clay saw his own alias followed by George’s Discord. Bad must have finalized the code. _That was fast,_ he thought. Clay had expected it to be at least a few weeks before the game went live, although he wasn’t sure what Bad did in his free time… maybe he had nothing better to do. Clay shrugged at the thought. 

Clay typed out a response: _That was fast. Can’t wait to see it in action :D_

He debated on the smile, but decided that being friendly was always the best option when Bad was involved. Maybe he and George could play on it together sometime? Clay glanced at the clock at the bottom of his monitor, it was only four P.M. for George, but depending on his sleep schedule… 

He could message him once he finished the calculus. Work now, play later. He had all the time in the world to message George, it could wait.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More interaction on the way! and angst on the rise. 
> 
> This took a bit cause I had classes from 7am-2pm and 4pm-8pm six times in the past two weeks so I really couldn't find the time to write. I'm really hoping to get the next one out sooner!
> 
> ALSO this work reached 2500 hits a few days ago so I want to say thanks to you all, I had an idea, and I'm running a fucking marathon with it.
> 
> Love y'all's feedback so tell me what you think!
> 
> <<3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies!
> 
> CW// In this chapter there is some description of a dead body, it all takes place in the large section of italic words, so you can skip over if necessary!

_ He could message him once he finished the calculus. Work now, play later. He had all the time in the world to message George, it could wait. _

____

George had been up for at least an hour now, but he hadn’t moved from his position. He was on his stomach near the right edge of his bed, facing the door just a few feet away. He couldn’t bring himself to get up just yet. With one arm tucked under the pillow beneath his head, and the other hanging limp atop his hip, he had been staring blankly at the wall adjacent to the bed for quite a while now. George had nothing to do today, so why get out of bed? 

After several more moments of blank staring, George threw the duvet off of his chest, flinging it to the other side of the bed. He rolled over to his back, star-fishing on top of the sheet beneath him. George gazed up at the ceiling, hands above his head. The sun was beginning to come up now, it had been dark when he woke up. George thought he must have been dreaming before he startled awake, a thin film of cold sweat had covered his face and shoulders, afterwards, he wasn’t able to fall back asleep. 

The longer he thought, the more bits and pieces came back. 

_ A room, it was white and far too bright for George’s sensitive eyes. He squinted into the glare, trying to make out the shapes. It was like there was a veil of fog between him and whatever was on the other side of the room, he took a few steps forward. It looked like the figures were talking, but George couldn’t hear them. He kept on moving toward the silhouettes, and the fog began to get just a bit clearer. He could see now, there were two people, they seemed tall and lean, probably male. The nearer George got, the clearer it became, he was surprised to see that the men were standing around some sort of table? Almost… examining something? George could hear whispers now, hushed and quick. The words weren’t meant for him, just for the men hovering over the table. All of the sudden, like he had been shoved, George found himself face to face with the two, one looked very familiar “Your Father” his brain supplied, ah of course, he knew he recognized him. The other man however, was someone not George nor his brain could recall. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The table between them held a figure, covered only by a thin white sheet, similar to the way George had been encompassed by the veil of fog that still danced in the corner of his vision. The men didn’t seem to notice George, or maybe they just didn’t care, but the one whom George was not familiar with plucked at the sheet, lifting it away from whatever it was that it concealed. George gasped with dread at what lay before him. A woman- no... his mother, pale, sickly and frail. Nearly as translucent as the fog and skin the same color as the sheet that still covered her torso. George gasped for breath, feet rooted to the floor and eyes held open despite every attempt to close them. She was dead, the bones of her clavicle stood out prominently from her chest, and upon closer inspection, George could tell that the sheet was nestled into a deep cavern below her ribcage. When had she gotten so sickly? So fragile? No one was supposed to look like this and live healthy. George’s brain tsked at that thought, and nudged him to watch her ribcage… stagnant, no breaths in or out. Her face was solemn and rock hard under the vise of skin that hung loosely around her bones. He nearly dry-heaved at the thought, the sight, the very idea of what lay in front of him. George heard himself take in a wracking breath of air, begging for relief from suffocating under the sight. At the noise, both men, who had still been talking in hushed voices, turned to look directly at George and- _

Then he woke up. 

George had never dreamed so vividly before, normally he couldn’t even remember his dreams. So he laid in bed for hours, recounting every second that he could from the dream, every image that was ingrained into his mind and he hadn’t moved much since, which brings us to the present. 

He hadn’t cried since his mother left the apartment, it wasn’t that he was holding it back, honestly, it might be nice to, well, feel something. George thought that maybe his mind just wasn’t sure how to handle it, and had just said fuck it and taken a break, but it was more likely just shock, either way, not ideal. 

Maybe a cold shower would wake him up, he needed to distract himself… 

Well, he could start with some hygiene. George counted to three before he rolled out of bed,  _ One, two, three, _ he shoved his weight to the right, he wobbled a little, barely landing on his feet. When George steadied, he beelined for the door and towards the bathroom to the right. George didn’t think twice before stripping out of his clothes. He first got in the shower  _ then _ turned it on, so he was blasted full force with freezing water.  _ What a way to wake up. _ George faced the shower head, directing the icy water at his face. He wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to preserve what little heat his body had left, but made no move to get out of the cold spray. 

Slowly, the water began to warm a bit. The cold spray turns lukewarm, and then scalding. Unmoving, George focused on the drumming pressure against his skull, letting the rhythm lull him. He took a half-step back, blinking open his wet lashes. Gingerly, as if trying not to fall, George turned his back to the spray, letting the water turn his already dark hair darker. He reached up with his left hand, tilting his head back and pushing up the hair that had plastered to his forehead under the showerhead. 

George took his time showering. His mind was useless as he slowly dragged the washcloth across his skin and slowly massaged shampoo into his hair. The suds were whisked down the drain along with any motivation George might have had for the day. He had a proposal from a small company that he could get a start on, but it just didn’t seem appealing, and although he had been scrubbed clean, George felt disgusting, inside and out. He was uncomfortable in his own skin. He could have gotten out of the shower then, but he remained under the water, letting it loosen the tightness in his muscles and relax his mind. 

How long he stood there, George wasn’t sure, time was washed away along with the soap. He remained under the water until he couldn’t stand it anymore, pruny and wrinkled and far too hot to bear. He stayed until he couldn’t stand the burning water any longer, he flicked the handle to the off position. 

He moved like a zombie, first wringing his hands through his hair to try and get rid of some water, then sluggishly opening the shower door to grab for his bath towel that hung on the wall. George rubbed at the hair on his head, ruffling the dark locks and flinging water droplets across the tub and wall. 

He took caution stepping over the threshold, trying not to slip on the slick. One foot, then the other, landed on the bath mat just outside the tub, with the towel still in hand, George wrapped the cloth around his waist. 

He padded across the few feet of cold tile to the bathroom counter, the hairs on his arm standing up from the drastic change in temperature, goosebumps littered his skin as he came face to face with himself, well, face to reflection, I suppose. 

With the towel on his waist, George could take in the expanse of skin in front of him, in the foggy mirror, George took in his own pale frame. Two of the three names on his body were visible, the fancy scrawl of “Dream” on his collarbone just near his heart, and the formal looking “Clay” on his bicep just above his left inner elbow. George’s eyes flitted from one word to another, he leaned forward, leaning his palms onto the cold countertop and dropping his weight onto his arms. He found himself staring at his collarbone. 

Whether it was the names that set him off or a sudden remembrance of his mother, George felt tears welling up in his eyes, and his throat constricted around a sob. The boy dropped his head between his shoulders and closed his eyes, trying to hold back the emotions threatening to break through his fragile dam. 

He hovered over the sink, letting his emotions take over for a moment. Tears streaked his face and he choked on his breathing. He didn’t try to hold back, letting everything that had happened in less than a week take him over. 

Y’know, it’ll really fuck you up when someone has the same name as the permanent and unwarranted tattoo on your body. 

When he was younger, George had dreamed of the day he would meet his soulmate. Maybe they would bump into each other in a coffee shop and instantly fall in love, finding out later that they each were marked with the other’s name. It would be like a fairytale, it would be perfect. That was always how George had pictured it. But the universe is weird, and people meet for strange reasons. 

George gathered his thoughts, he wiped away the salty tracks left behind on his face. He had to first convince his body that he was stable enough to stand straight back on his feet, his brain jumped from tragedy to tragedy, images of his dream flashed behind his eyes, just another reminder of his instability.  _ Great _

Once George had carefully righted himself on the balls of his feet, still resting his fingertips on the counter, just in case. His lower jaw continued to tremble, eyes threatening to spill again. He didn’t want to do this here, hovering over his bathroom sink and feeling the urge to smash his fist into the cold stone countertop under his fingertips, just to give his mind something else to give a damn about. 

George clenched his jaw and pinched his eyes closed, he shook his head violently, maybe jostling his brain around a bit would help? His hands pushed his weight away from the counter, and his feet guided him to the door. On autopilot, George was steered back in the direction of his room -he had left the door open in his haste earlier. He tossed the towel onto the ground grabbing the first pair of boxers and sweatpants he found along with a soft t-shirt out of his laundry basket that sat on the floor waiting to be put away sometime soon… probably not gonna happen. 

He was about to leave and find something small to snack on before going back to sulking in his bed or in front of his computer screen when his phone lit up on the floor. 

George remembered now, he had been watching videos of people power washing dirty shit because it made him feel some kind of calm, that had been around three A.M. George figured he had probably fallen asleep and let the phone fall to the floor at that point, he hadn’t cared enough to check it when he had woken up and gazed in boredom. 

He reached down to pick up the small device, the battery was nearly dead, he had been up pretty late and it had been laying on the floor for several hours now. The clock told him that it was just a bit past noon. 

George had a few Discord notifications, but they could wait until he had at least put something in his system. Maybe he had some cheese sticks in the fridge still… 

George tossed the phone onto the bed, discarding the cell in favor of sulking in the kitchen. If you’re going to have a depressive episode, you might as well make sure the entirety of the house gets to experience the bullshit that is mental health. 

George was going to try his hardest to take care of himself first, then worry about the real world. Even though he tended to get distracted sometimes… Well, you know what they say, better late than never. 

George slid into the kitchen to find something to shove into his own stomach.

____   
  


Clay had finished what work he had planned out for the day, much earlier than anticipated in fact. It had been a few hours since Bad had sent out the message about George’s game, yet the coder still hadn’t responded, he must have been busy. 

But still, Clay sent him a private message.

_ Dream: Hey, wanna jump on Munchy sometime soon and see if our (your) hard work paid off? _

Clay tried to slide a bit of humor into the question, he had the rest of the day to screw around, maybe George would want to waste some time with him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This hit......250,,,,,kudos???? and 3500.,,.,.,,.., hits???? 
> 
> I love you all, thank you so much<3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buenos dias fuckers

_ Dream: Hey, wanna jump on Munchy sometime soon and see if our (your) hard work paid off? _

_ Clay tried to slide a bit of humor into the question, he had the rest of the day to screw around, maybe George would want to waste some time with him? _

____

George had found himself standing in front of his fridge, his eyes lit up by the fluorescent bulbs. Cool air surrounded his face. He grabbed a carton of apple juice, nearly empty. He should really get out to the store sometime soon. George set the carton on the counter, reaching up to the cabinet to grab a glass. He poured himself a large glass of juice, taking a sip before setting the glass back down onto the countertop with a clink. Footsteps tapped over to the kitchen cupboard in search of something small and dry to try and force down. 

George settled on a bag of rice cakes tucked into the back of one of the shelves. The bag crinkled when he picked it up, the noise was almost too loud in the silent apartment. 

Crisps and juice in hand, George found himself in his living, criss-cross on the sofa. He reached to his right for the television remote, flicking it on to see the channel he had last been watching. Some children’s show projected onto the screen, bright lights and bouncy characters filled George’s vision.  _ Definitely not watching this.  _ He needed something tame and not headache inducing. 

Channel to channel, George flicked. Trying to find something to pique his interest. He settled on some sort of baking show, men and women bustling around a small kitchen and shouting about time and ingredients.  _ Good enough _ . He thought. George set the volume at a low level. It was cloudy outside, so there was very little light coming through the windows to his right. The blinds were already drawn, so the room was dark and solemn. It was almost like he was hiding in his own home- with the room dark, and the TV volume low. George even tried his hardest not to make noise as he crunched on the rice cakes. 

It was probably half an hour or so before he finished the snack, it was a small bag, but he had slowly alternated between the crisps and sipping his juice. The TV took his mind off of the ache in his stomach at the largest “meal” he had eaten in nearly two days. But his brain thanked him for the nutrition.  _ Water probably would have been ideal, but apple juice just tastes so much better. _

The contestants on the screen were sharing the desserts they had produced to a panel of judges. Cakes, cookies, and a few things that George couldn’t put a name to were presented, and he watched dully as the judges critiqued a lame looking dish. The panel lamely announced the winner of the challenge, George was bored of this. 

_ Maybe he should try to work on that commission? Being paid wouldn’t hurt…  _

The brunet clicked the TV off, throwing the room into nearly complete darkness. He sat for a moment in the dark, his thoughts ceased to plague his mind now, seems like the minor breakdown in front of the bathroom mirror had drained him of his angst… for now. Well he could find something to do while he wasn’t feeling like shit. 

He gathered his things, the glass, the empty bag, his sanity… before making the short trek back to the kitchen to deposit the glass and bag into the sink and trash can respectively.

George completed the long and challenging (not) walk from the kitchen to his bedroom. He should probably check to see what the Discord notifications were for, likely not anything important… 

He pushed open the cracked door with his forearm, first bending down to pick up his phone from the carpeted floor. With the device in hand, George lowered himself into the desk chair in front of his PC screen. He dragged his mouse lightly across the desk, quietly waking up the desktop. The phone sat face-up on the desk, still yet to be checked for notifications. 

The first things that popped up when the computer burst to life were several Discord notifications. George scrolled through the notification board, _spam, spam, a message from Dream, spam, spam-_ _hold up._ George frantically flicked back to the message.

_ Dream: Hey, wanna jump on Munchy sometime soon and see if our (your) hard work paid off? _

From three hours ago… whoops. 

His brain buffered for a moment, trying to make sense of the words. There was another alert for a new group he had been put into. He clicked over to the members first - _ huh, Dream and BadBoyHalo.  _ He scanned through the two messages in the group. One from Bad letting them know that George’s code would be up for the two to try, and a short response from Dream. 

_ Dammit. Why did his name send a flutter through George’s stomach every time he heard it? He could count the number of times he had spoken to the guy on half a hand. _

George feels his eyes slip out of focus as he contemplates his response. He abstained from a reply to Bad’s message, instead, answering Dream directly. 

His fingers tapped across the keyboard in thought, not enough pressure to actually type, but the movement allowed George to fidget slightly in the chair. The quiet clicking over the keys served as background music to the thoughts that danced behind George’s eyes. 

Once his brain had mustered up the words and strung together a sentence, his fingertips flitted across the keys, typing out a mindless response. 

_ George: I’m down to play sometime:] I’m pretty much always free. _

That message was sent at 2:46 PM. So that means the Dream first messaged him at like, 6 in the morning in EST?  _ Time zones are so damn difficult.  _

George had found himself using “:]” every now and again. Seemed nice enough, although he couldn’t fully be sure with the numbness that was blanketing his emotions. He made his best effort to sound genuine. Maybe talking with someone else and getting his mind off of… well, life. 

It seemed as that was the most eventful thing to happen in the time that he hadn’t checked his notifications. But in more mundane news, his game was live on the server, which was exciting enough. It was one of the first things that made George feel something today. 

He was proud. Proud of himself for managing to complete a project. He made that code, from start to finish, almost completely on his own. And that made George happy. 

____

_ Two hours earlier _

Clay had been dicking around for the past few hours. He had spent some time double checking that he had completed the work he needed to in order to keep on track to finishing everything in the allotted two week span. 

It was a bit past ten in the morning now, Clay was sitting in front of his monitor, however, for the past half hour or so, he had been screwing around on social media, but there was only so much entertainment that Twitter and Instagram could provide. He had refreshed and re-refreshed his feed for far too long. He was bored. 

He glanced up at his monitor, Discord open on the screen. He scanned through active friends, looking for someone to bother. Sapnap was on on "Idle". They hadn’t spoken in a bit, other than the occasional check up. Sap had gotten super busy with a new job and Clay’s lack of conviction had ended up with a slight drift apart, but the two had never needed constant contact to still be good friends. Well, when presented an opportunity… 

Clay took a steadying breath before smashing out his message to the younger boy. 

_ Dream: hey dickhead, wanna get on hypixel? _

He grinned to himself at the lewdness of the message, but he and Sapnap never had filters around each other. It was only a few minutes more of scrolling through Instagram before a ping resounded through the speakers. 

The blond nearly threw the phone in his hands out of surprise, jolting harshly in his chair, it was a miracle he didn’t hurt himself. Clay had a tendency to do stupid shit like that. He laid the phone down on the desk, clicking into the message. 

_ Sapnap: Hell yes _

Before Clay could even finish reading the message, the call tone rang out. He quickly connected his headset, slipping them on and pushing his hair out of the way. Then he picked up the call. 

“Dream!” A shout reverberated through his skull. It had been too long since they spoke. 

He giggled himself before returning the favor, “Sapnap!” They fell into a fit of laughs, and it was a good thing Clay was home alone because he was  _ loud _ when it came to Sapnap. 

“Dude, it’s been literally ages,” Sapnap, ever dramatic, “Did you forget about me?” The younger boy tried to sound upset, but Clay could hear the snicker he let into the microphone. 

“Yeah, I decided I didn’t like you anymore.”

“I’m hurt. That was a low blow, Dream” 

Clay held himself back from making a joke about “low blows” but refrained… he would have plenty of time for innuendos later. 

“I’m sorry, dude…” Clay didn’t elaborate, Sapnap let it go. 

Sap changed the subject, easing tension was, like, his specialty. “Let me boot up Minecraft, are you on yet?”

“Give me one sec and I will be,” hurried clicking was heard through both boys' mics. Once the window loaded in fully, Clay was able to click into the server. “Alright, I’m on.”

“Bedwars?” 

“You know it,” both teens smiled into their mics, even though they hadn’t spoken in a bit, it was always just as easy to fall back into routine after time apart. 

“So tell me what you’ve been up to, it’s been too long,” Sapnap spoke once a match had started. They were playing duos, not focusing too hard, this was to hang out, not to try-hard. 

As they played, Clay explained the events of being partnered with George on the project for Munchy, although he didn’t go much into, well… the fact that George also happened to be the name stamped on his body, or the time that he accidentally called George instead of Sap in the midst of a panic attack. 

Sapnap listened as Dream rattled on about school and the schoolwork he had put off, then he moved onto meeting the owner of a smaller server, and then getting a job on said server. Dream was now going on about how he was trying to code more often, he had done several websites, and wanted to move on to plugins for Minecraft. Sapnap listened quietly, responding in short phrases to let his friend know he was still listening. Although Dream was interrupting himself enough shouting about their Bedwars opponents. 

“If you’re passionate about coding, dude, I say go for it. You have time to learn how to do it, and access to people who could teach you. Maybe consider some online classes in your free time?” Sapnap was probably far too invested in his friend’s life, considering this was the most they had spoken in several weeks. Maybe it was just natural for them to care so much about each other. They had been close for almost five years, it was a relationship that couldn’t be broken by some time apart. 

It had to be a few hours that they played, they won some, lost some, but the best part was that they were able to chat about everything and nothing all at the same time for hours. At one point, Dream was just making every effort to fuck up Sap’s speedbridging, cackling with glee as the younger boy was pushed off of his bridge over and over again. Sapnap yelled, Dream wheezed in response. By the end of it, they could barely speak without laughing their asses off. 

Clay wasn’t sure what force urged him to look at the Discord screen on his monitor, but when he did, his eyes were immediately drawn to the green bubble underneath George’s name.  _ He was online. _

He was called back into reality when Sapnap shouted at him for letting their bed get destroyed. Clay muttered out an apology, forgetting about George and putting his focus back into the game. 

Unfortunately, that focus was broken once again when a message from George pinged his headset. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what it is, but writing with Sap involved is so refreshing, and it obviously brings out something feral inside of me that wants to curse every other sentence  
> ____  
> So I realized today that I've passed 25k words on this story, if I'm honest, I wasn't planning on going past like three chapters but I've gotten so invested in this plot and oh my god I can't stop. 
> 
> If you've stuck around through the two months of updates and are still here... thank you. I love seeing your comments and kudos, the positive affirmation is what has kept me on my updating game.
> 
> Love you guys:')


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come get yall juice

_ He was called back into reality when Sapnap shouted at him for letting their bed get destroyed. Clay muttered out an apology, forgetting about George and putting his focus back into the game.  _

_ Unfortunately, that focus was broken once again when a message from George pinged his headset.  _

____

Clay was now fully out of the game, the response had been pretty out of the blue. Well not completely… but with the time zone difference, and the way that George had described his sleep schedule didn’t leave Clay optimistic for a response any time soon.

_ George: I’m down to play sometime:] I’m pretty much always free. _

“Dude, are you AFK?” A voice came through the headset, one ear piece on, the other resting behind the shell of his left ear. 

“Nah, I’m here, just tabbed out for a sec,” Clay replied, his voice told Sapanp that he was obviously not paying attention in the slightest. 

“Well, you got killed and our bed’s gone. So good job, Dream,” The tone of his voice had no bite, so Clay could tell that he wasn’t actually mad, just screwing around with him. 

“Oh…” Clay hesitated, “piss off,” he cracked.    
  


“Well we lost, way to go,” he snickered. “What are you doing, anyway?” he questioned. Heavy key hits could be heard coming through Sapnap’s microphone. 

“Uh-” Clay paused. “Just got a message from a friend,” Between his words, Clay was trying to conjure up a response to George’s message The blond couldn’t help the smile that graced his face at the “:]”.

Of course, Sapnap being Sapnap, “Oh~ a  _ friend _ ?” The word was drawn out and insinuating something else. 

“Heh,” Clay laughed, “yeah, Sap, a friend.”

“You mean you talk to other people? People that aren’t me? Am I not enough for you?” God, his sense of humor was so fucked up. They both burst into laughing fits. 

“Shut up, Sap. I’m not replacing you or anything.” They were in the game lobby now, Sapnap’s avatar bouncing in circles around Clay’s, occasionally stopping to crouch and look him in the face. Clay laughed when he saw his screen filled by his friend’s skin. 

Sapnap could hear typing coming from Dream’s end, he sat quietly for a moment, letting the other boy do whatever it was he needed to do. 

_ Dream: i’m free for the rest of the day, i know we’re in diff time zones, but if u can hop on in a bit i’m down ;) _

Clay read over the message, once, twice, then sent it. Only after he sent it however, did he notice that what was meant to be a smiley face… it wasn’t a smiley face. He audibly groaned, dropping his face down onto the desk, a soft  _ thud _ was heard through Sapnap’s headset. 

“You good, Dream?” He had been prancing around the Hypixel lobby, but was brought back to his friend by the noise that he had made. 

“I’m an idiot. An idiot who can’t read, Sap,” he knocked his forehead on the wood of the desk a few more times for good measure. 

The Texan giggled in response to his friend’s words. “What?” He spoke through his laughs.

“I was messaging my friend, and instead of a colon-parenthesis, I sent a semicolon-parenthesis.” he whined into the microphone attached to the headset. 

“Huh?” was all that Sapnap said, sounding confused. Although, Clay did tend to say things that made no goddamn sense. 

“Sap~” He whined, “If a colon and a parenthesis makes a smile, then a semicolon and a parenthesis makes a winky face,” his voice was muffled, as he was still face down on the desk, but the wood was nice and cool against his skin. 

Sapnap was quiet for a moment before it struck him, “Huh- Oh,” the realization dawned on him, his mind drew the mental picture, and he could now see why his friend had bashed his forehead on his desk. And he wouldn’t have been Sapnap if he didn’t bust out laughing at the situation his friend had gotten himself into. 

“Don’t laugh at me, I just made it weird,” Clay righted himself in the chair, leaning back only to slouch back into the leather of the chair. It was a relatively nice chair, he wasn’t mad that he stole it from his dad’s office. 

“Just tell ‘em that you mistyped,” Sapnap spoke, he had gotten back into another game, Clay could hear him smashing his keyboard aggressively, as he tended to do. 

Clay sighed, ready to agree that it wasn’t a big deal, but, unfortunately, it became a big deal.

“He read it, Sapnap!” Clay was fully shouting now, panic seeped into his voice, “He’s typing, Sapnap!” Even more panicked. Sapnap only cackled in response, “Stop laughing, you useless son of a bitch,” Clay was borderline pouting at this point. 

“Oh, piss off,” The younger bit back, stealing Clay’s own words and using them against him. 

____

George was confused, to say the least. That had to be a mistake, right? There’s no way Dream intentionally sent him a winking emoji?  _ Right? _

Rather than question it, George moved on with life, well, he tried at least. While the winking face itched at the back of his brain, the logical part of his mind ignored it, fingers moving to the keys to type out an answer. Although, Dream really didn’t give him much to go off of with his own response. Well, it wasn’t like George had anything to do for the rest of the day, he could get started on that commission, but a more sane part of his brain told him that he was definitely not in the right mindset to mess around with work and adult things at this moment. 

_ George: Give me an hour or so and I’m good to go:]] _

Double brackets this time, extra happy. 

George compared the format of each of their messages, the lack of capital letters, the carelessness. George wished he didn’t freak over every single character in a sentence. Dream had probably glossed over the fact that he sent a wink instead of a smile. He was reading way too far into this. 

To be honest, the hour that he had asked for wasn’t for anything in particular, mostly just so George could catch his breath for a moment. He kind of wanted to brush his teeth again and get some water to cool the panic dripping down the back of his throat, he needed a minute to prepare for such an event. Okay, maybe he was being a bit dramatic. 

The reply was instantaneous. 

_ Dream: awesome _

_ Dream: message me when ur on _

The two messages pinged one after another, once again, with the informality. It was almost embarrassing when George thought about his own nearly perfect punctuation and spelling. 

_ Jesus, _ his brain really would not give him a break today. 

George pushed back from his desk, once again walking to the bathroom. Again, the white lights washed over his skin, making him look even more pale and lifeless than he was already feeling. He slowly but surely brushed his teeth, it was the least he could do. George lamely stared at his thin frame in the reflection, not dwelling too long on the bags under his eyes, and the visible tiredness that hung like weights on his skin, yeah, he tried not to think too hard about that. He spat out the mint paste in his mouth, rubbing what had smeared over his mouth on his shirt sleeve. Gross, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care all that much. 

On his way back to the bedroom, George’s bare feet scraped across the fake wooden hallway floors, it took years to get back to his bedroom. The hallway was long and endless, although he could see the light of his monitor peeking through the open door, he would reach it soon. At least, that’s what it felt like to George. 

The brunet found himself back at his desk, stationed once again in front of the monitors. 

George chose not to respond to Dream’s last message, it didn’t feel necessary. Instead, he opened a new format for the commission he had received. It was a small thing, it wouldn’t have taken too long on a day where George was fully “there”, but today just wasn’t one of those days. 

For the fifty minutes or so that George had until he was supposed to get on with Dream, he lazily came up with some starting points for this company’s website. In truth, George didn’t normally code sites and the likes, but whatever it takes for money. Even though he’d much rather making mods and creating plug-ins, websites were just so boring.

Time flew as he lamely clicked through plans, not truly getting any work done, but at least setting himself up for success in the future. 

George was checking the time at least once every few minutes, but even as he literally watched time crawl past, before he knew it, it was nearly time. Relieved to have an excuse to shut down the site program (George had simply been deleting and retyping everything he had already input). He leaned back, stretching his arms out to the side, before reaching forward and cracking his knuckles one by one. He booted up Minecraft in one window, prepared to type out a message to Dream in the other. But he took his time.

____

Clay and Sapnap had taken to a survival world. What had started out as a speedrun had morphed into the two taking turns chasing each other with swords. They cackled into their mics, the few hours they had spent playing made the several weeks apart feel like it never happened. But their friendship was just like that, they had never needed to talk everyday, or even every week to still remain good friends. Clay was grateful for that. 

Clay hadn’t been watching the clock, he also hadn’t let Sapnap know that he was going to leave him for George… He would make up an excuse when it was time. But the back of his mind told him that it would be an ass move. 

“Wait-” Clay was interrupted by his friend’s maniacal laughing. “Chill, Sap.” Clay laughed in return. “I have to go soon, dude. That game I worked on got put up on Munchy for some mods to try, and I’ve gotta go do some final tests with George.” He crouched in-game, blocking Sapnap’s hits with a shield.

“What? Dude, you’re leaving me?” The younger teased, hitting him several more times with an axe. “I knew you replaced me,” Clay could hear the smile in his voice. He was relieved that Sap wasn’t mad. 

“Yeah. You jealous?” Clay poked back, just to rile him up. 

“Yeah, dude.” Sapnap crouched in front of Clay’s character, his pixelated face filled the screen. Clay couldn’t help the wheeze that slipped out at his friend’s playful dumb-assery. 

“Oh, come on.” Clay punched the other once, he only returned to his spot crouched in front of him. “You’re so clingy,” he joked. 

“Yeah, what about it,” Sapnap punched back. 

Clay was distracted from their “moment” by a notification, from none other than George himself. Sapnap noticed that his friend had gotten pulled away from their conversation, “Dream~” he groaned into the headset. 

“What~” Clay responded, mocking. 

“Why don’t you love me?” 

“We’ve been playing for two hours, Sapnap. I have to go do things for my  _ job _ .”

“Dude, you can’t call working on a Minecraft server a “job”, c’mon,” Clay could hear the giggle that followed his words. 

“Shut up. I have to go, Sap. But I promise I’ll talk to you soon.” Clay’s voice was level, genuine. 

“You promise?” Sapnap had returned to crouching and fully taking up the screen with his Minecraft skin. 

“I promise.” 

“Okay, okay.” There was a pause, before Sapnap got aggressive. “You better be telling the truth,” he punched at Clay’s character, proving the point of 'you better not ghost me again'. 

“You’re fucking feral, Sap,” Clay laughed, “and I promise, I swear.”

“Okay, you can go now,” All of the bite in his tone had disappeared, “Bye, Dream!”

Clay returned the farewell, smiling to himself as the call ended. He really had missed his friend, one of his only friends, probably his best friend. That was kind of sad… his best friend was some kid from Texas who he had never actually met, didn’t know what he looked like, and was like a sophomore in high school or something, Clay couldn’t really remember. 

Being online friends with some random he met on a Minecraft server just seemed fitting, huh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I grinded this out in 24 hours, so here y'all go


	15. Chapter 15

_ Clay returned the farewell, smiling to himself as the call ended. He really had missed his friend, one of his only friends, probably his best friend. That was kind of sad… his best friend was some kid from Texas who he had never actually met, didn’t know what he looked like, and was like a sophomore in high school or something, Clay couldn’t really remember.  _

_ Being online friends with some random he met on a Minecraft server just seemed fitting, huh.  _

____

_ George: I’m on whenever you’re ready _

George crossed one leg over the other, leaning back into the headrest of his chair. Around him, the starting lobby for the MunchyMC server loaded up, various blocks rendering around him. 

His foot tapped on it’s own volition, only slightly nervous. There was nothing to freak about, this was just two guys playing Minecraft, except every time that George caught a glance at Dream’s name, his stomach twisted just a tiny bit. Yeah, this was normal.

George lifted his headset up from hanging around his neck to resting on his ears. In the bottom of his screen he could see,  _ August 7th.  _ Time sure does pass quickly once you finish high school. Although, George’s high school experience mostly consisted of doing college work in his free time and learning how to code in his early teen years. But that had ended in a computer science degree and several coding certifications. 

Being antisocial through teen years had its perks, you know. 

____

Clay took a moment to decompress after the call with Sapnap, and he couldn’t push away the light feeling that had his mind soaring. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Clay was coasting on endorphins from being carefree and actually taking time to screw around with his best friend, it had been a while since he had let himself “go” and it felt great. 

He hadn’t been able to read George’s last message; Sapnap had distracted him with the whining and pouting. But, George had just let him know that he was ready, _alright then,_ _time to use these happy chemicals to be friendly._

At this point, Clay was fully ignoring the fact that every time he glanced down at his left wrist, he was reminded of the fact that the coder shared the name that was embedded there. Yeah, he was just going to forget about that. But it was real fucking tough to gloss over the shock that shot through his veins every time the thought registered. 

Clay took his hands off the keyboard and mouse, shaking his hands out, maybe he was trying to dispel the pins and needles that had settled under his skin. Once the blood flow had returned, his hands were replaced on the mouse and keys, and he scrolled over to the “Call” symbol. Without further consideration, the dial tone rang. 

The answer was almost immediate. 

“Hey!” An accented voice spoke.

“Yo,” Clay returned.

“Long time, no speak, huh?” Clay laughed at that one, it had really only been a few days since he had called George in a panic. 

“Sure, you on the server?”

“Been here a while. You took  _ forever _ ,” Clay smiled, George really reminded him of Sapnap’s constant whining. 

“Yeah, yeah. I was busy.” Clay said, the server lobby began to load up on his screen.

“Wait, really? We can play later…” George sounded worried, and Clay felt like a shit person at that very moment. 

“No! No- I was just screwing around with a friend, it’s totally cool. He’s jealous that I left him, but he’ll live,” Clay explained, he sure was good for putting his foot in his mouth. He wasn’t sure how to explain just how not-upset he was to be on with George without sounding like a douche apparently. 

“Alright, Bad said that the server link was in the mod room.” They both right clicked as they hovered over a golden apple in their hotbars, it was the teleporter into the mod only location. Once they reappeared, a wall covered in signs appeared to their left. 

“Bad told me I could name it,” George started, he was scanning over the wall of teleporter signs, “but he didn’t expect me to be shit at naming things,” George crouched under one of the signs, signaling for Clay to read it. 

Clay cackled when the words came into view, “KitPVP? That’s all you could come up with?”

“Creative, right?” George laughed along with him. The name made sense at least, it was PVP, but with different kits, logical.

“It makes sense at least,” Clay responded through giggles, George had begun “dancing” below the sign. Said dancing consisted of crouching and standing repeatedly while his head flung about and he punched the air around him. 

“Alright, click the sign,” George had stopped his party under the sign, and had disappeared after clicking it.  They reappeared in an unfinished starting lobby. As he took in the surroundings, George spoke again. “Bad has had builders working on this for a while now, making arenas and stuff. He asked if I wanted to, but I’m shit at building.”  Clay recalled the man asking if he wanted to build for a new game, Clay had declined as well. “He asked me too, I pretty much said the same thing.” 

“So click the blaze powder, it should bring up a menu.” 

Indeed it did, in front of him were about six different kits, from potions, to melee, to bow, and every type of armor. “Woah,” Clay spoke. 

“Yeah, woah. Bad wants to add more, too. This is just what he’s had time to do so far,” George explained, it seemed like he, too, was rifling through the menus, examining everything they had to offer. “I sent you an invite.” Sure enough, in the chat was a link  _ Play KitPVP with GeorgeeeHD.  _ Clay hit accept. 

“Where did your username come from?” Clay asked, an arena loaded in around the two. 

“Just  _ GeorgeHD  _ was taken, so I put the extra E’s, the “HD” are my initials. Pretty lame,” The sentence ended with a short “heh”. George sounded embarrassed of the origin of the name. 

“Can’t compete when my name is so cool, huh?” Clay glanced at the hotbar, an iron axe and some food were all that was there. In his inventory, he could see that his character donned a shield accompanied by full iron armor. 

“Oh, please, your name is just a five letter noun, you aren’t original,” George bit back. The blond liked this dynamic, the back and forth was something he had struggled to find a balance with when speaking to online friends. It’s always hard to tell intent when you can’t actually see the person you’re talking to, but this just felt natural. Not nearly as stiff and stuffy as their first call, although it had loosened up a bit by the end, they were cautious around their words when they had first spoken. 

George was distracted by the battle getting ready to take place- he had been waiting for a witty remark from Dream after George had made fun of his name, instead, George was greeted by Dream running straight towards him, axe in hand. Before George could even react, the other landed a square critical hit. 

They chased each other around the map, George shouting for mercy, Clay shouting threats. 

“No!” George was effectively ruining his voice, “Leave me alo- Dream!” Dream cackled at the scream of utter agony. Soon enough, laughs turned to wheezes and he was struggling to find his breath amidst George’s demands for a rematch. 

“Okay, okay, let’s go again,” he had barely managed to catch a few breaths before they were back in the arena, face to face. 

George made the first move this time, but to no avail, was bested once again by Dream, and several more times after that. As hard as he tried to get good hits on the other, Dream defended and attacked like it was nothing. 

“Why are you so good?” George, borderline whining, spoke into the microphone of his headset. Dream gave a loud barking laugh at the question

“I sit at my monitor twenty-four seven, I’d hope I’m good,” Dream spoke, his voice was crisp and bright, even through the bad quality of his microphone, George could tell he was smiling, just based on the sound. 

They were teleported back to the game lobby, the unfinished space took shape around them. George examined the pillars that had been started in the room, it was meant to look fancy he supposed. It would probably look better once it was finished and well lit. 

George began a lap around the room, sprinting and dodging in and out of the empty crevices yet to be filled. He came to a stop in front Dream’s stagnant avatar,  _ maybe he was AFK? _

“Dream?” He was still in the call. 

“-eah?” The bad microphone cut off the beginning of his words, not picking up like it was supposed to. 

“Oh, I thought you went AFK…” George continued his race around the lobby. Out of the corner of his eye, a brightly figure stood, still unmoving. “If you’re such a pro, why do you have a noob skin?” George came to a stop in front of the solid colored skin. He wasn’t sure what color it was exactly, but it was something bright, yellow maybe? It looked yellow to George. The center was decorated with a simple pixelated face, it was, by definition, a noob skin in George’s opinion. 

“What?” Clay tried to sound offended, “noob skin? My skin is top tier. Yours is like Walmart Steve,” The blond laughed more at his own joke than George did. 

“But your skin is such an ugly,” George paused, “Yellow?” The sentence wasn’t phrased as a question, but George’s hesitancy to finish the comment sure made it sound like one. 

“Yellow?” Clay asked. “My skin is green- Are you colorblind?” Clay asked with such ferocity that his microphone cut out just a bit. George groaned, prepared to be teased for his colorblindness. “No, like actually, are you colorblind?” George had resumed running around the stone columns, but was quiet still, “George?” Clay prompted.

“Ugh, fine. Yes, I can’t see, like, green and red,” Another half question half statement. Almost like George wasn’t quite sure  _ what _ he could see. 

“So I look yellow to you?” Clay was incredulous, his mouth had dropped open. 

“Yeah, you’re like… a dark yellow color? I don’t even know,” George went to go look for a new kit to play on. 

“Dark yellow? What, like piss?!” Clay was shouting now, “George, do I look piss colored to you?” Clay had taken both hands off his keyboard and mouse, and was leaning forward onto the desk. 

George was laughing in these short tapered little gasps, like the air didn’t want to fill his lungs properly. His laugh was high pitched and giggly, he just listened as Clay ranted on about being “piss colored”.

Between laughs, George managed out, “Piss boy, Dream,” followed by more breathy laughs. A few moments had led to both of them barely able to catch a breath, Clay was hunched over the desk now with his head in his hands, wheezes pushed from his throat, 

“Piss boy, Dream~,” Clay echoed the words, collapsing onto the desk in laughter. How had chasing each other around with axes turned into this. 

George was laughing harder than he had in a long time, laughing like this almost made the events of the past few days blur into nothing, almost. It was the most carefree he’d felt in a while.

George had leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head as he tried to stem the laughter bubbling from his chest. 

“I- I can’t catch a breath, George,” Clay’s voice was light and wheezy as he spoke, it almost launched George into another laughing fit. 

“Okay, I’m fine, I’m fine,” George righted himself in his chair, retaining composure. At least, he was trying to. George took a breather before speaking. “Bad’s supposed to add more to this, if you ever want to play just let me know.” 

Clay was a bit thrown off by the proposal, sure it was just George being friendly, but it did manage to catch him off guard. “Sure, I pretty much do nothing but school work and fuck around on my PC.” 

"Ha! Imagine still being in school, loser," George poked fun. 

"I'm gonna graduate this year, hopefully online. But I turn eighteen in…" Clay tapped the screen of his phone, it lit up with a display of the time and date, "five days actually." Jesus time had flown in the past few months of being a bum and doing absolutely nothing.

"Well, happy early birthday. I actually have a commission that I need to work on but I really would rather not, so it's basically like school." 

“Oh, do you have to go?” Clay asked, only a bit disappointed that this… thing might be coming to an end. 

“Pfft,” George let out a careless noise into the microphone, “I’m not leaving, I have like a week to do it. I just remembered that I have an actual job and got sad.” 

Clay couldn’t help the rush of air from his lungs at the upset tone of George’s voice. “Well, good. I thought you were going to abandon our Minecraft date.” And there he goes, putting his foot in his mouth once again. Maybe he had just slipped a bit too far into the careless mindset. First the accidental winky face, now this.  _ Jesus, get it together, man. _

George snorted, “Minecraft date? Simp,” George sing-songed, chasing Clay’s solid colored body around the map. 

Clay spluttered, “Wha- I’m  _ not _ a simp,” The blond thought back to a few days previous, the barista in the coffee shop had approached him. He played it off… by telling her he had a boyfriend. Yeah, Clay definitely was not a simp. 

“Yeah, Dream. You’re a simp,” George put both of them into a new duel. Now with a bow and some arrows. Clay was going to destroy him. 

They both loaded their bows, taking aim at each other. 

“Dream~” George murmured. 

“ _ George~ _ ” Clay echoed back, lowering his voice. They circled one another.

Clay took the first shot, successfully getting the first hit. George fired twice in quick succession, landing one, the other dodged, but only narrowly. Clay returned another arrow, another bullseye. George missed his next shot, and the one after that as well. Clay however, managed another hit. One the Floridian had taken the lead, George just couldn’t win. 

“No! Dream, leave me alone,” George made to run away from the fight. But with his back turned, Clay was able to land another arrow. 

Down to four hearts now, George attempted to put some space between the two to heal, the arena was just too open for George to hide from the fire he was under, and was easily killed by another two shots from Clay’s bow. 

Clay laughed, cheering in victory. 

“You’re such a sweat,” George complained. 

“You’re just mad you lost,” They were teleported back to the game lobby, “Are you a sore loser, George?” Clay teased the other man. 

“Shut up, you’re a try-hard, Dream.”

“Oh come on. You sound just like Sapnap…” Clay shook his head at the similarities between the two. Sapnap had always picked on him because he was a “sweat” when in reality, he was just mad that Clay destroyed him at PVP. 

“Sapnap?” George asked, echoing Clay’s words.

“He’s my friend, and he always complains ‘cause I’m better than him. Just like you,” Clay’s voice got higher at the end of his sentence. Trying to hold back laughter. 

“Shut up, you’re, like, cheating or something.”

Clay wheezed, “How am I cheating? It’s PVP, George.” 

“I don’t know, you just are,” George was pouting at being beaten, several times for that matter. 

“Oh, Georgie-,” Clay froze, that was completely an accident. He had glanced down at his wrist, remembering the name that was written there,  _ Georgie _ , and the nickname, had just kind of slipped out. 

“Georgie? My  _ mother _ calls me Georgie,” He laughed at the slip up. At least he wasn't mad?

“It was an accident,” Here they were again, devolved into wheezes. Clay’s face was red, with laughter and embarrassment. The name had just sort of slipped out. 

George couldn't deny the flutter in his stomach at the nickname. Why, though? Only his mother had ever called him Georgie, she had used the nickname more than his real name since he was small. Y’know, he could bet that his soulmate had Georgie written somewhere on their body with the amount that his mother used it. 

  
“Whatever,  _ mum _ ,” George teased. Putting them back into another duel. He was determined to win at least one game today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also the game mechanics and teleportation stuff is obviously just made up because I have no idea how the Munchy stuff works :P
> 
> This was like twice as long as what I would normally post but there just wasn't a good place to end, oh well. This is really dialogue heavy, and I'm not sure whether or not I like it, but it's hard when they're communicating online.
> 
> Let me know what you think! 
> 
> I love you all <3


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW//  
> Mentions of throwing up, nausea
> 
> No actual throwing up, just some sickness:)

_ “Whatever, mum,” George teased. Putting them back into another duel. He was determined to win at least one game…  _

____

George left the call with a smile on his face. They had played for a while, testing all of the kits that Bad had put in place; George had managed to win a few of the duels. But even though Dream had sworn that he wasn’t going easy on him, George didn’t really believe him. 

George had stared for a bit at the Discord messages between the two. He was leaning back into the chair now, slouching into the tough fabric. He leaned onto the left arm of his chair, resting his temple on his left knuckles. The brunet couldn’t wipe away the gentle smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. George studied the clock like he couldn’t quite believe how long he had spent playing Minecraft of all things. 

It was nearly six o’clock now, and miraculously, George was sort of hungry. He hadn’t really felt the need to eat for the past several days, but apparently something had flipped. He pondered for a moment, swiveling lightly in the chair.  _ There’s barely any food in the kitchen, nothing to make a meal with at least.  _ He should probably order something…  _ Pizza?  _ Too greasy. _ Indian?  _ George wasn’t in the mood for something spicy.  _ Chinese?  _ He could get some lo mein. _Good enough._

George rummaged around for his phone, locating it under his thigh, pressed between his leg and the chair. Google presented him with the number for the closest Chinese restaurant, the dial tone rang. 

It was only a few moments of what sounded like elevator music before he was answered. George placed his order: Chicken lo mein and some egg rolls. In the end, the delivery cost was definitely not going to be worth the amount of food he had ordered, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

The brunet forced himself up and out of his bedroom, grabbing his wallet off of the nightstand next to his bed before going to station himself in the living room near the front door. 

It wasn’t quite dark yet, so there was warm light encompassing the whole of the living room. Yellow and orange light swayed across the walls and floor as the sun began to slip below the horizon. George settled on the couch, pulling his legs up to rest his weight on the armrest to his left. 

The brunet was wrapped in a halo of golden light, though the contentment he felt slipped away like the sunset. All too soon, the warm glow that illuminated the room was swept away, and cool grey fingers snuck in through the cracks in the blinds. Stealing away the warmth and replacing it with clouded skies and fading light. 

George tried to ignore the way that the smile etched on his face was fading away, and that the light feeling was starting to weigh a bit too much as it pulled at his heart. George was being pried away from a happy moment by the cold dead fingers of the body that had shown it’s ugly face in his dream the night before. The figure in the nightmare couldn’t have been his mother, no she was bright, full of life. Not pale or sickly.

George’s arms circled his own waist, his body shivered, not of cold, but the image that it kept reminding him of. He never wanted to see it again. 

____

By the time Clay had shut down the game, hobbled to the toilet, and made it back to his monitor, he could hear the tell tale signs of a car pulling into the driveway. 

He really had no reason to be on the computer now, he couldn’t think of anything he had to do at this point, and he was a little burnt out on Minecraft for the day. So rather than restarting the PC, Clay swiveled in the chair, just fidgeting in place while he waited for whoever just pulled in the driveway to come in the house. He prayed that it was his mother rather than father, his mood was too good to be ruined just yet. 

He listened, not so patiently, as the sound of a door opening followed by footsteps echoed through the open downstairs area. Clay pulled his hands into his lap, nervously fidgeting with the bracelet on his left wrist. He had originally worn it to cover the name there, but at this point, it was so worn and stretched that it provided barely any shelter to the letters. 

There was still a faint line from where Clay had mindlessly burnt himself on a hot plate a few days previous, but the mark was faded now, a very faint slash through the otherwise unblemished skin. His index fingertip ran over the line, tracing the burn. It had begun to scab a bit, the top layer of skin turning a pale color and flaking away from the tan wrist underneath. 

A voice echoed from below, “Clay?” He breathed a sigh of relief, it was his mother, praise. 

“Yeah?” He responded, raising his voice, she was home much earlier than normal, it was just past one thirty now. Clay didn’t think she was going to be home before six… The blond listened as footsteps ascended the staircase. There was a light rap on his door before it was pushed open. 

“Hey, Bub,” his mother spoke, she hadn't used the nickname since Clay was small, where was this conversation going? “Some people from your father’s work invited us out for dinner tonight, it looks like a nice place. We’re leaving at six.” Her voice was curt, but not harsh, just her usual tone.

“Oh, well, have fun,” Clay smiled, his parents needed to get out sometime, it had been a while since they were able to get away from the house together.

“No- Clay, we’re  _ all _ going. You included.” The boy spluttered, then gaped, disbelief showing on his face, he was always too expressive for his own good. “Look, it shouldn’t be too bad. It’s one of your father’s coworkers, and they have a son your age, Clay.” Oh great, his parents are setting him up with friends.

Clay only responded with a look, eyebrows lowered and mouth turned down into a displeased frown. 

“Please don’t be like this, it’s one dinner, Clay.” The blond knew that she was not making this a topic for discussion, the more he argued, the more difficult this was going to become. 

A staring contest ensued, Clay trying his hardest to look intimidating, his mother stared back, one eyebrow raised. Daring him to continue the argument. 

“Fine,” Clay relented, “Do I have to, like, dress nice?”

“Yes, at least a button up. You can wear jeans… if you must.” She paused. “You have four and a half hours, we’re leaving at five-thirty,” And with that, she was gone, back down the stairs, leaving Clay alone to sulk and figure out what the hell he was going to wear.

____ 

George had crawled from his place sunken into the couch when a knock at the door interrupted the comfortable silence, climbing from the hole that had formed under his weight, George retrieved his food, quietly shoving a few bills into the delivery driver’s hands, before shutting the door behind him. The interaction was haste, no longer than it had to be, and George was able to return to his couch crevice. 

Now with food in hand, George unwrapped all of his newly acquired goods, setting boxes on the side table to his left. 

George slowly made his way through the lo mein, followed by light crunching sounds as the egg rolls followed. George could barely taste the food, it was more like swallowing bland tar. The weight settled heavy in his stomach, and George couldn’t tell whether it was the food or something else entirely. 

The room had gone from orange to grey and now nearly to black as the sun was no longer peeking through the window. The tendrils of light whisked away by the nighttime darkness. 

Soon enough, the egg rolls were nothing but crumbs and all that was left of the lo mein was grease at the bottom of the box. But a bad taste was left behind, a bitter cling to the back of George’s throat. He removed himself from the encasement of the cushions, dragging along his mess of takeout boxes on his way to the kitchen in search of something to wash down the taste in his mouth. Another unsatisfying meal that he no less than forced himself to eat. It could have been styrofoam for all George could tell. The dryness that climbed from his stomach supported the theory as well. Desiccated words sat abandoned at the base of his throat. George was nauseous. 

A glass was grabbed out of a cabinet, filled with water, and downed with a few swallows. Another full glass followed. George tried to wash down the dryness and bile that threatened to creep from his stomach down and out of mind.

He didn’t want to be awake anymore. George slammed the glass cup onto the counter, it was a miracle nothing broke. The parched feeling had been dulled a bit, but the threat of throwing up was ever imminent.

George groaned, he shouldn’t have forced himself to eat like that. And downing water the way that he did definitely did not help, although it _had_ improved the bitterness in his mouth. George lowered his forehead onto the cold countertop, letting the cool stone distract him from the sickness he felt. Leaning on his elbows, George let the urge to vomit dissipate slightly, and he sighed at the small relief that it provided. 

When he felt a little more secure in the fact that he wasn’t going to vomit anymore, he pushed himself off of his forearms, weight balanced on his palms, George let the dizziness from sitting up fade before he stumbled to his bedroom, leaving the takeout trash abandoned on the counter. 

George found himself face down on his bed, absorbing the coolness in fabric and sighing into the sheets. George managed to wiggle out of the joggers without moving from his spot star-fished on the bed. The cool air washed over the newly exposed skin, the fall air had lowered the temperature in the apartment significantly.

It could have been minutes or hours that George willed away the sick feeling that swam in his gut, he wasn’t sure. There were a few times where he thought he might have to get up and run to the toilet, but alas, nothing ever came up. George tried to focus on the gentle flow of air through the room, he tried to let it lull him to sleep, but here he was, far too many minutes did he lay there, trying to fall asleep. But the turning in his gut pulled him farther and farther away from sleep. 

It was probably only eight o’clock at this point. George’s sleep schedule wasn’t prepared for something like this. He had only woken up about ten hours ago, no matter how much his body protested, his mind wasn’t ready for sleep. 

After enough time pretending- George’s brain gave in. He had laid still for long enough for his mind to give into sleep. Hopefully, a nap would fix his nausea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a pretty mundane chapter, I just wasn't able to get into a flow like normal, so maybe I'll get some friction to get the next one out soon!
> 
> Also thank you guys for 400 kudos :o  
> This has become a huge dedication and seeing the same people comment and keep up with the updates is what keeps me updating :')
> 
> <3


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I present.....a new character :D

_ After enough time pretending- George’s brain gave in. He had laid still for long enough for his mind to give into sleep. Hopefully, a nap would fix his nausea. …  _

____

Clay had finally decided to get ready at five fifteen, sure he had been doing nothing up until that point, but he really didn’t feel like sitting around in stuffy clothes for longer than he had to. He grabbed the first pair of jeans that he saw and knew were clean. They were a dark blue wash, they’d go fine with whatever kind of shirt he decided on. 

The blond rifled through his closet, trying to find a shirt that didn’t scream “homebody” and would be acceptable for what his mother had deemed a “nice” restaurant. 

Clay pulled two button down shirts out of his closet, the fabric was stiff with disuse, they were probably something his dad or grandparents had gotten for him, The blond couldn’t recall the last time he’d dressed nicely for _any_ kind of event. 

There was a mirror that sat atop a dresser pushed against the wall. Papers and trinkets and things that Clay couldn’t be bothered to put away sat atop the surface. It was a mix of “teenage boy” and “slob who didn’t leave the house”. It really did wonders for the ambiance in the room.

The shirts and pair of jeans were thrown at the dresser, not wasting any time, Clay stripped out of his tee and sweats to examine himself in front of the mirror. The blond frowned, there was a dent in his hair from the headset- nothing some water and fiddling couldn’t fix. 

Clay retrieved the jeans from the dresser top, wiggling the denim over his legs, jumping slightly to pull them up fully. It had been a while since Clay had worn these, they were significantly tighter than he remembered. Oh well, he could deal with them for one dinner, tight or not. 

Second up was finding an acceptable shirt. One was a pale blue color, solid. The other, shades of grey plaid. The plaid shirt was tried on first, the fabric was softer than the blue shirt, but it was significantly more wrinkled.  Clay wasn’t sure how long he had owned the plaid shirt, but it most definitely was not made for someone of Clay’s build. He could barely move his shoulders against the fabric, the buttons strained against the facets,  _ guess the blue shirt will have to do. _

Button by button, he undid the shirt, shrugging off the undeniably too tight sleeves. The powder blue shirt took its place, already fitting much looser than the previous. Clay adjusted the collar around his neck, fastening the buttons into place. Clay examined the shirt in the mirror, turning his torso a bit to get the full picture. His eyebrows raised on their own accord,  _ not bad,  _ Clay thought. The light blue made his hair look blonder than normal. When he was young, he was nearly platinum, but seventeen years later, it had darkened to a dirty yellow shade. But the light blue highlighted the lightness in his hair and, dare he say brought out his eyes. 

Clay definitely would not admit that he spent a few moments too long admiring himself in that mirror. That absolutely did not happen. Although, the shirt may or may not have brought out the green in his eyes. Clay glanced down, remembering not only the bracelet, but the name that rested there. 

Clay tugged at his left sleeve, testing to see whether or not it would stay in place to cover the name. Ever since the name had shown up in such a visible place, Clay had become very partial to hoodies and long-sleeved shirts. The blond performed a small routine in the mirror, stretching his arm out and moving around to make sure the sleeve wouldn’t ride up too much. Once he decided that it would be tolerable, it was time to sort out the blond mess of hair on his head. 

The dent from his headset was slightly improved from the ruffling that had ensued, but it still needed some TLC to be remedied. In the meantime, Clay debated on whether or not to tuck in the shirt, he’d decide later, now, to fix his hair. 

The Floridian found himself in the bathroom, blond hair turned silvery under the white lights. Clay started by combing backwards through the hair with his fingers, ruffling and re-laying the locks in place. There was some improvement. 

The next step was water, Clay ran his fingers under the tap, using the water to flatten the hair to his scalp. He ran his hands from back to front, laying the hair flat against his scalp. He patted the hair, maybe a bit too aggressively, trying to coax it into laying flat. He probably only had a few minutes until he had to leave the house, he had put off getting ready until literally the last minute. 

Clay did a final once-over, his hair would dry on the way, and if not, he didn’t particularly care. The shirt would stay untucked, Clay undid the top button of his shirt, it was getting a bit too… unbreathable. All together, Clay looked pretty alright. 

His father had come home about an hour ago. Barging unannounced into Clay’s room to remind him about dinner, not very nicely, but to remind at least. 

“Clay, are you ready to go?” His mother, from downstairs. 

“Yeah, coming!” He responded, one last fluff of his hair before he darted to his room, pulling on some too tight dress shoes that he wasn’t sure how he acquired. Clay thundered down the stairs, footsteps loud through the entire house. 

In the kitchen, Clay’s mother was rifling through her purse, she wore a navy blue dress, one that Clay hadn’t seen in a long time, if ever. Her hair was pulled up, a fancy mess of tawny curls at the back of her head. On her feet were a pair of short black heels, they didn’t look particularly comfortable, she was shifting back and forth on her toes a considerable amount. A delicate silver chain and pendant rested around her neck, the blond recalled his father gifting it to her a few years back. 

From his own bedroom came Clay’s father. Navy slacks and a blazer over a white button down, not much different from his usual work attire, clean cut and firm. The teen pretended not to notice the unimpressed once over his father gave him. Clay looked fine, the old bastard could deal with it. 

The man disappeared back into the hallway, presumably back to the bedroom. A moment later he returned, a second blazer and belt slung over his arm. 

“Here,” He handed the items off to his son. “Tuck in your shirt and throw these on top,” Clay was a little surprised. The words weren’t said with any bite, it almost felt like a true father-son moment. Hastily, Clay tucked in the blue shirt, threading the black leather belt through the belt loops, and layering the blazer on top. The sleeve of the jacket offered a bit more security over the name on his left wrist. 

Clay was sort of speechless, a breathless, “Thank you,” breezed his lips. His father only nodded in return. 

“Ready?” His mother chimed in, handing her husband the car keys. Without a word, the trio left the house. The weather was much warmer today, faint sunlight decorated the sky full of puffy clouds. It was a nice day, and Clay could use a trip out of the house. 

It was five thirty-five when they pulled out of the driveway. Clay in the backseat fiddling with his phone, his mother touching up her makeup in the visor mirror although Clay was pretty sure that she had put it on only half an hour ago, as her husband told an overly mundane story from work. Twitter had gotten boring, Instagram had run dry, and Clay didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking how far away there were, so he sat silently. 

Clay had been slowly pondering over the fact that these people they were meeting apparently had a son his age, but knowing his parents, “his age” could be anything from twelve to thirty years old. He prayed that they were at least within a few years of eighteen, for this dinner to be bearable, he needed at least that. 

His mother had said “son”, so maybe a guy his age? With his luck it’ll be some Mommy’s boy jock that would have beat him up in middle school. Well, he wouldn’t know until they arrived. 

When they pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant, Clay was thanking the fact that his father had given him the blazer to make it look a little like he cared. This place was nicer than Clay even wanted to think about. 

Clay trailed behind his father and mother who walked side-by-side. He couldn’t help but adjust and readjust his jacket and shirt. The three crossed the threshold of the restaurant, met by greeters at the door. Clay watched as his father scanned the restaurant. There was a large bar against one wall, lit up by swimming neon lights. Waiters in black and white bustled around the floor. Large tables decorated every open spot, the room was quite dark, highlighted by blue and green lights on the walls and encasing the tables. It was like an aquarium, floating and rippling. 

Clay was drawn away from the lights by his father laughing and raising a hand to wave at someone, presumably his co-worker. The boy followed blindly behind his mother’s curled hair.

He could hear his father greeting another man, and his mother introducing herself. Into view came a six top table, the short end pushed up against the wall. At the end closest to the wall, a boy, probably around Clay’s age, a relief. Next to the boy, a brunette woman, and to her left, her husband, a well dressed and clean looking man. The family, all together, looked very… tidy. Not including the mop of hair on the son’s head. It was a fluffed mess of brown, falling into his eyes, he looked just as displeased to be at this dinner as Clay felt. 

The blond was drawn into the conversation, “ -my son, Clay.” The mentioned boy moved to offer a lame wave, but his hand was snatched into a tight handshake. Clay probably looked like he had been electrocuted with how high he jumped, but he tried to reconcile by offering a smile and quiet greeting. 

Clay was taken aback at the accent present as the man moved to introduce himself and his family. In a way, it reminded Clay of George. The drawl and lilt sounded very familiar on the man’s tongue.  _ Why was George’s accent familiar? They’d only spoken a few times… ugh, now is not the time. _ The son was introduced as “Will”, and he gave a shy, but toothy grin at the mention of his name. 

Clay’s father motioned for him to take a seat across from Will.

“Hello.” Will’s posture was tight and confined, like he was uncomfortable, he probably was, to be fair. But his words held the same lilt that his father’s did. 

“Hi, I’m Clay,” Clay breathed, settling into his chair, a loud screech resonated from the chair legs on the floor when Clay tried to move closer to the table. The look on his face must have been what caused Will to giggle, it was quiet, Clay almost missed it. But his eyes shot up to meet Will’s. The other boy went stony, laughter ceasing immediately when their eyes met. But the fear on Will’s face, like a deer caught in headlights, sent him into a fit of snickers. 

Unbeknownst to the two boys, their mothers watched on, pleased that it seemed they were getting along. 

“How old are you?” Will spoke, his voice was still nervous, as was his body language. But maybe a little more relaxed, like a thread had been pulled loose and given him some room to breathe. 

“Seventeen,” Clay responded, their voices were much more hushed than their parents, Clay noticed. The men talking about work, and the women speaking animatedly about something Clay didn’t understand. “I’ll be eighteen in a few days though,” It was true, five days and he would be an adult. 

“Oh, happy early birthday,” Will spoke, his face brightened, “I’m twenty-one if you were wondering,” Clay never would have guessed. 

“Thanks, thanks" he muttered. And you know, Clay was never good at controlling his tongue, "Are you from England?” Clay wondered aloud. 

Another toothy grin took over Will’s face, his eyes lit up. “I am, actually. How’d you guess,” The older boy teased. 

“I have a friend with a similar accent.” Clay shrugged. Will nodded in response. 

“And if you don’t mind… I go by Wilbur, Mum’s the only one that calls me Will.” Clay thought Will-  _ Wilbur _ looked embarrassed to ask such a thing, so Clay tried to return the bright grin that Wilbur seemed to cling to. 

“So…”  _ What do people talk about?  _ All Clay did was code and play Minecraft, and most people aren’t that into that sort of thing. But, lucky enough, Wilbur didn’t look like the jock type that Clay feared he was. “Got any hobbies, Wilbur?” Absently, Clay mimicked the move that the other boy made to push his mess of hair out of his face. God, he hoped that the headset bump had gone away. 

“Music mostly. Not much else really…” Clay liked Wilbur’s accent, it was smooth and rolled like waves. 

“That’s cool, you play any instruments?” Clay asked, musicians fascinated him, he was never able to play well, or even decent, when he tried. 

“I play guitar, and bass… and piano,” It was like Wilbur was embarrassed of his hobbies, maybe he mistook the look of surprise on Clay’s face for something not positive. Clay wasn’t very good at reading people, that was obvious. 

“That’s cool. I tried to play the trumpet in middle school. That was the extent of my musical career.” Both boys chuckled. See, Clay was good with conversation, he could do small talk with just about anyone, it was just getting to a place where he was comfortable with talking to aforementioned people. 

“What about you?” Wilbur asked, Clay quirked an eyebrow. “What do you do?” 

“Uh-” Clay wasn’t anticipating his friendliness to backfire. “I… code things. I want to- I wanna mod games and stuff.” The last half of the sentence came out sort of rapid-fire, tumbling from his lips and running far, far, away from the conversation.

“Really? That’s interesting, I’ve never understood any of that stuff. It’s quite literally a different language.” Clay couldn’t help but feel a little smug. Wilbur didn’t need to know that Clay really didn’t have that much experience with coding. “What do you plan on modding?” Wilbur asked. 

Oh here we go, “Um- Minecraft?” The statement was most definitely formed as a question, Clay found himself copying Wilbur’s tight posture, shoulders stiff and hands limp in his lap. 

“Minecraft?” The British boy asked. 

Clay tripped over his words, “I… yeah, Minecraft.” His shoulders sagged a bit on their own accord. 

“That’s sick, dude. I’ve played before,” Wilbur watched as Clay visibly perked up, he had obviously struck an interest. 

They chatted for another few moments, interrupted briefly when a waiter came to take their drink and food orders. Clay ordered something that looked good enough,  _ pasta alla vodka, _ the description said it was a _ “Ricotta filled pasta with a spicy tomato cream sauce,”  _ it piqued Clay’s interest, he stumbled his way through ordering his meal.

The parents had all conjoined into one conversation, leaving the “children” to entertain themselves. Clay tried to pretend to be interested in whatever his father was talking about. He and Wilbur’s conversation had gone stale after the waiter had ended it abruptly. Clay was left to sit and fidget with what was available. First it was the paper wrapper from his straw, but it had fallen apart, now he was left to adjust his position in the chair over and over, fiddling with the sleeve of his jacket, tugging it more securely over his left wrist. 

Clay had managed through almost the entirety of his glass of water, all that was left were a few measly ice cubes that Clay watched melt as he waited for his food. It seemed as though he and Wilbur both had turned to listening to their parents speak, but out of the corner of his eye, Clay could see as Wilbur’s eyes darted from face to face, sometimes flickering to Clay, sometimes turning to scan over the restaurant, just overall restless. 

It seemed like ages before their waiter reappeared with several dishes in hand. Meals were passed around the table, a plate of stuffed pastas covered in a creamy sauce was laid in front of Clay. It smelled incredible, he hoped it tasted as good as it smelled. 

Clay lifted his glass for a refill when the waiter returned with a silver pitcher. Wilbur did as well. Wilbur raised his glass to Clay in a fake cheers, Clay grinned, clinking the rim of his glass against Wilbur’s in a toast. They shared a twin laugh. 

Maybe Clay _could_ tolerate another few hours of this. 

The pasta was nice, spicier than Clay normally would have liked, but good nonetheless. Dinner was mostly quiet, dotted by small comments on the meal. 

Soon enough, the plates had been emptied, and the talking returned in full. Wilbur struck up a conversation about school, asking Clay what he planned on doing after high school and the likes. A comfortable flow settled into their words, relaxed and natural conversation returned, and was hardly interrupted when the waiter leaned over to collect the used dishes from the table. 

Clay’s glass was refilled once more, and he leaned back slightly into the chair, half resting against the wall to his left. Long legs stretched only as far as he thought socially acceptable. On the table, the blond’s fingers had taken to twirling the thin bracelet around his wrist, not focused on the toying. 

To Clay’s right, his and Wilbur’s mothers were speaking passionately about something Clay hadn’t been paying attention to, he ignored it in favor of Wilbur’s question. 

“Y’know, I’ve never lived anywhere but here, I’d like to travel though.” Clay spoke. 

“I’ve been all over, it’s nice, until you have to go be the new kid at school again. I was lucky enough to only switch schools a few times when I was actually still in school.” Wilbur had mentioned that his family had moved around quite a bit for his father’s job. At this point, he didn’t need to stay with them, he just really had no reason to leave. Clay couldn’t be sure that he would stay with his parents if he had the opportunity, or even the option to be on his own. 

“Heh,” Clay breathed a laugh, “I can’t imagine being the “new kid” over and over again.”   
  


“I was pretty friendly as a kid, so it wasn’t awful,” Wilbur reflected. 

“I’m planning on online school this year… trying to finish on a good note.” Wilbur nodded thoughtfully at Clay's words. 

“I was always one that needed to get out of the house or I would get myself in a... hole that I couldn’t get out of.” That seemed like a sensitive topic… “The social life was the only redeeming factor of school,” Wilbur pulled a grimace, Clay laughed at the disgust written on his face. 

To his right, his mother was talking animatedly with her hands, she did that when she was passionate about something. Both boys were pulled from their conversation to watch the women speak. They shared a sideward look, eyebrows raised and mouths pulled taught to avoid laughter slipping out. 

“Anyways…” Clay began, “What are-” 

The blond barely had time to react. His mother’s hand collided with the cup in front of him. Her numerous rings clinking against the glass. The glass and the water inside it were sent barreling towards Clay. Before he knew it, his lap was filled with icy cold water. 

The boy leaped from his seat, “Shit!" He spluttered, "That’s cold,” he all but shouted into the nearly full restaurant.

The whole table’s eyes were wide as saucers. 

“Clay!” Uh oh, his mother, “Watch your mouth.” She hissed, moving to pull him back down into his seat. 

Clay gaped, pulling off the blazer, it was the most of his clothing that could come off at the moment, and it was barely even wet. His jeans were soaked, from his belly button to mid thigh had been doused in the freezing drink. His mother stuffed a few napkins into his hand, and by a few, Clay meant a few. Three flimsy paper napkins. 

The first thing Clay did was wipe the seat of his chair, to at least be able to sit down and get out of the public eye to clean himself up. His dark jeans had turned even darker, luckily, the restaurant was dim enough that Clay hoped it wouldn’t be too noticeable. 

The waiter appeared out of nowhere again, laying a hefty wad of napkins on the table before disappearing back into the bustling crowd of people. 

Clay groaned as the stack of paper was passed in his direction, his father looked considerably mortified, his mother, equally as embarrassed. Wilbur’s parents looked as though they didn’t know how to properly react, eyes still glossed with surprise. 

Wilbur however, well, the poor boy looked like he was about to explode. His eyes were nearly all white with how large they were, and his mouth seemed as though it had been stapled shut with how tightly closed it was. His cheeks were splotched with red, pink creeping down his neck as he restrained the laughter threatening to burst from his lips. 

Wilbur had been trying to hold himself back, but the distressed sound that came from Clay’s lips… Wilbur nearly  _ lost _ it. 

Breathy laughs surrounded the six, Wilbur's mother made an attempt to calm her son by landing a particularly harsh jab at his ribs with her elbow. It sure did not help the boy, in fact, it probably made it worse; now bracing himself against the table to steady his wracking shoulders. Clay groaned at the laughter and the incredulous looks on the parent’s faces. 

Wilbur finally managed to calm himself down, “I’m cold now,” Clay deadpanned, looking his mother straight in the eye. She chuckled, muttering a small apology with a smile, reaching out to adjust Clay’s collar like it wasn’t the least of his worries at the moment. 

“Dab, don’t rub. It’ll soak it up better,” Wilbur spoke, face still painted red. 

“Alright, Sherlock,” Clay sneered in a poor mockery of the British boy’s accent. This time it was Wilbur’s father that was overtaken by chuckles. At least the man had a sense of humor.

Any tension that surrounded the table before had been sliced, or maybe dissolved by the water poured in Clay’s lap. 

“Clay-” The blond’s father spoke. 

Interrupted by his own son, Clay whined, “I’m cold~,” In the general direction of his mother. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” She was still smiling her charming smile. 

The youngest of the six slumped back into the chair, lazily patting at the still cold wet spot. 

“Worst. Dinner. Ever.” Clay pronounced. Punctuating every syllable, but it was said with a hint of a smile. Clay had to admit, it was a little bit funny. 

Everyone at the table couldn’t help but grin, even Clay’s ever stony father. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I was wondering if I should make a twt to interact with readers and other writers? Is that even something y'all would be interested in. It really fuels my desire to do well when I get praise from readers so... I might just make one and let people follow for some inside updates and shitposts. I'll drop socials next chappie if I end up making it
> 
> Love you guys <3


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> CW// Contains vomiting, not specific and very brief

_ “Worst. Dinner. Ever.” Clay pronounced. Punctuating every syllable, but it was said with a hint of a smile. Clay had to admit, it was a little bit funny.  _

_ Everyone at the table couldn’t help but grin, even Clay’s ever stony father.  _

____

The dinner had come to an end soon after Clay’s “bath”, conversation had returned to the table, albeit, a bit freer than before. The blond was still soggy from navel to thigh, the water settling into his skin and chilling in the restaurant air. 

With his jacket off, Clay couldn’t help the goosebumps breaking out on his arms under the thin shirt. The blond took note of the way that Wilbur was shifting in his seat, he consistently tugged at his collar, maybe Clay just hadn’t noticed him doing it earlier in the dinner, but now, without the food to distract him, it seemed like it was happening more and more often. 

Unthinking, the blond had pulled the sleeves of his shirt up just a bit to have more room to move and clean himself up a bit. Unthinkingly revealing the bracelet that did little to cover the name there.

Wilbur was the first to notice, first squinting at the dark marking, trying to figure out what the tattoo was, and his eyes widened at the realization of what exactly he had caught a glimpse of. 

Clay’s own eyes darted upwards at the sound of a quick breath taken by the boy in front of him. He raised a concerned eyebrow to the other. Silently asking what the noise was for. 

Wilbur shuffled… Anxiously, almost? And Clay’s line of sight was drawn to Wilbur’s index pointing to his own wrist. Clay just continued with one raised brow. Shaking his head slightly, not understanding the language Wilbur was speaking. Wilbur scoffed, and then made a show of pulling his sleeve up a bit, and aggressively pulling it back down. 

Clay paused, before quickly matching the older boy’s action of pulling down his left sleeve. Damn having such a visible name. Clay could feel his cheeks tingling with a rush of blood. He was sure that he was blushing visibly even in the dim restaurant light.

Wilbur, too, looked sheepish. Seeing someone’s soulmate name, especially on accident, was more than embarrassing. Like ripping your pants and not knowing, then someone has to come up and tell you that they can see your underwear... See, everyone feels a little different about their soulmate names. Some people have no problem sharing, others guard them with every fibre of their being. Some didn’t believe in soulmates and had them permanently covered. Soulmates were, well, in the eye of the beholder. 

It seemed as though no one else at the table had noticed the accidental “flashing”, so Clay offered a nervous smile and a quiet “Thanks” breezed his lips. Both hands had settled in Clay’s lap now, fingers pinched over the cuff of his sleeve, not even giving it the opportunity to crawl upwards again.

The air between the children of the table had gone stagnant once more, but the parent’s conversation carried on as nothing had gone down. Truthfully, nothing really had. Wilbur couldn’t make out what the letters on Clay’s wrist had spelt, only that it probably wasn’t something the blond wanted anyone else to see. Wilbur had figured that it would be best to tell him rather than leave it alone. 

Wilbur himself only had one name on his skin, just a few letters on the right side of his neck, it was an extremely visible spot and Wilbur was far too familiar with the struggle of keeping it covered. The older couldn’t imagine that Clay _hadn’t_ noticed the way he picked at the collar of his shirt. He tugged and pulled constantly at the fabric to hide the name on his neck. Maybe he should invest in some scarves?

Clay could hear the conversation to his right coming to a close. His father was scooting a bit in his seat and his mother had moved to collect her purse from the back of her chair. Clay took that as a nudge to get ready to leave, he pulled at the lapels of his blazer, firmly adjusting it on his shoulders. 

The men at the head of the table stood, shaking hands once more as they exchanged farewells. In turn, the women as well, shared goodbyes. Wilbur gave a simple wave and smiled, which Clay mirrored, with his right hand of course, no need for another slip up. 

Clay wondered, should he ask Wilbur for his number? Or socials? Maybe they could talk sometime… Lord knows Clay could use a few more friends his age, and in real life.  _ But how to phrase it without making it weird? _ Who cares, it became weird when Clay flashed Wilbur with his soulmate name and had a minor freak out about re-covering it

Clay stood, following his mother as she pushed in her chair and slung her purse onto her shoulder. 

Clay took a breath, “Do you have, uh- Discord?” Clay asked, “It’s what I use most often…”

Wilbur had brought himself to full height.  _ Jesus he was tall.  _ And Clay watched as his face went from stony to split back into a toothy grin, nodding in confirmation. Clay rattled off his information before saying goodbye to Wilbur and his family. 

On the way out of the restaurant, they weaved through tables avoiding the fast moving waitstaff. “Maybe we can play Minecraft sometime?” An accented voice spoke, “I’m not very good, but I wouldn’t mind playing more.” Wilbur offered, Clay nodded, grinning at the proposition. 

“Yeah, I’d love to play. I’m on most of the time, just message me,” Clay nearly had to look up to make eye contact, it would have been intimidating had Wilbur not shared the likeness of a puppy. 

“You got it,” The European accent wrapping around his words. There were more farewells shared as the families exited the building and moved onto the concrete path outside the door, more or less out of the way. 

“Well, dinner was lovely, it was nice meeting you all.” Wilbur’s mother spoke. “Good to meet you, Clay,” the aforementioned raised a hand in acknowledgement.  _ They never actually spoke… but I suppose you could call it a meeting? _

There were a few more words between the men, something like, “See you tomorrow,” and whatnot. The sky was dark now, light dripped from the windows of the restaurant onto the pavement. Final,  _ final _ , goodbyes were spoken. And each group went to their respective cars. Clay was tired, it had been one hell of a day, from Sapnap, to George, to a surprise dinner. This was the most excitement Clay had suffered through in a long time. 

____

  
  


George had been lulled to sleep by the hum of his standing fan that stood in the corner of his room. It was on nearly all the time, stupid Brighton weather and lack of air conditioning. The white noise and cool breeze had calmed him and distracted him from the churning in his stomach for long enough to sleep. 

He woke up in a cold sweat and although he was wearing only a shirt and sweats, stomach was still rolling with nausea, worse, much worse than before. 

George threw himself out of the bed, dizzily stumbling to the bathroom. The brunet went shoulder-first into the door frame of the bathroom, he hissed upon impact. Ignoring the ache in his arm, George dropped to his knees in front of the toilet. Dry heaving over the bowl. What little George had eaten, noodles and egg rolls, were dispelled along with bile that burned as it crawled up his throat. George groaned. Leaning over to rest his forehead against the bathtub to his right. The cool porcelain chilled George’s overheated body. He sniffled a bit. His head hurt, his body ached, his stomach was malicious in its attacks. Continuous turmoil even after it had been… well, emptied. 

It was dark still, George had managed to slap the light switch in his fumble to the bathroom. But the hallway still seeped with darkness. 

George squinted his eyes against the fluorescent lights, the reflection of the white light off of the toilet, tub, and tile was far too much for George’s addled brain. The brunet rolled over to sit upright, slumped against the tub. George threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the over powering light. His head lolled to the side a bit, elbow resting on the rim of the tub.  _ God, this sucked. _

George rubbed his palm over his face, groaning under the too-hot contact. He was sweating, it was too hot, too bright, too...much. He braced himself, trying to will away the last of the nausea, _fuck it._ George used the rim of the tub to heave himself off of the floor. He shuffled and stumbled to the sink, the brunet flicked on the tap, thrusting his head underneath the water. It was a tight fit, and only the ends of his hair and face got wet, but it was some sort of relief from the heat radiating through his body. 

There was no way George didn’t have a fever, possibly a serious one. The brunet turned his head, letting his mouth fill with water. He swallowed in small sips, partly to cool his throat and partly to wash away the taste in his mouth. Under the bright light, the boy’s skin was nearly see-through, bags weighed on his eyelids, pale skin mottled by veins and sickness. 

George cringed at the taste in his mouth, there was no way he was going back to sleep in this state. The brunet slowly and carefully brushed his teeth, taking care to scrub his tongue of the taste of bile. When he felt satisfied with the cleaning, the boy stuck his head under the faucet once more, swishing mouthfuls of water and spitting it down the drain. He glanced up to see himself in the mirror

George was reminded of the corpse from his dream. And the more he thought about it- George shivered. Water dripped from dark hair to white skin, like tear tracks tracing his bones. George flicked the light off, leaving his reflection as a dark ghost of himself. 

George fumbled his way through the hallway once again, resting just slightly against the wall for stability. The churn in his gut had eased a bit, and George once again crawled onto the bed. But not without shucking his shirt first- it had gotten a bit damp after the brief sink bath. 

Now in just sweatpants, George let the hum of the fan lead him back into a state of not-so-asleep but not-quite-awake. His mind slipped into a quiet place, like a limbo in between consciousness and sleep.

George had rolled over to his stomach at some point, face buried in his pillow and chest bare against the cool sheets, he hadn’t bothered to pull them over himself so his back was bare to the ceiling. 

Eventually, George fell back into something of a restful state. Lying on his stomach had, for some reason, calmed the ache that quaked through his guts. 

Every breath put the boy deeper into sleep, lucky enough, dreamless. For now.

____

Clay had shucked the blazer and button up the moment he had the door of his bedroom closed behind him. The jeans followed soon after, replaced by a loose t-shirt and basketball shorts. Clay rolled in his desk chair, stationing himself in front of his computer screen. 

He scrolled through the next assignments he would need to do for the next few days. Clay realized he could easily grind out the assignments… maybe something to do tomorrow and have the next couple of days free? It was late now, for a normal person that is.  _ 9:17 _ flashed in the bottom right corner of the screen. The blond compromised with himself, if he felt motivated enough tomorrow and nothing else to do, he would knock out the week’s work. 

Clay leaned back into the fabric of the chair, long arms stretched above his head as his spine cracked over the arch of the backrest. Clay took care to pop all of the knuckles on each hand as well. 

He remembered that Wilbur had added him on Discord, Clay had nearly forgotten, of course he would have seen the notification the next time he opened the app… but well, he was here now. 

He approved the request, adding the other back. His screen name was just “WilburSoot” clear enough. 

In all honesty, Clay really hadn’t sat at the desk for any particular reason, he could stay on, find someone to talk to maybe, or he could go to bed at a reasonable time and be refreshed for the work that he was inevitably going to have to do in the morning. The latter made more sense, Clay rolled away from the desk, pushing himself out of the chair and falling into bed a few feet away. 

Look at him, being a responsible human. 

____   
  


George’s “dreamless” sleep had only lasted for a little while. The boy was paralyzed. Walking through a familiar fog, whispers and murmurs tickled at his ears. The hair on his arms stood on end as the outline of two figures came into view. He breached the fog, entering a room, enclosed in white curtains of rippling smoke. In the center, the same white sheet. The same as before, the sheet was pulled away, and the sunken mass of skin and bone lay, even more lifeless than before. Dark hair haloed the face, splayed across the table like fingers reaching out. The locks were dull and fragile, all of the life had been sucked from the body. 

George nearly gagged from the sight, he didn’t know it yet, but this vision was much worse than the first. There were no rough edges around this dream, there were no jagged lines here. It was all vivid, clean cut, sickening. 

George couldn’t move. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for a bit of a late update, I sort of found it hard to get into the writing flow for this chapter. Oh, well... Here she is!
> 
> Love you guys :')


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii, merry Christmas Eve for anyone who celebrates!
> 
> // This chapter contains description of scratching at one's own skin, it's pretty short but there's your warning

_ George nearly gagged from the sight, he didn’t know it yet, but this vision was much worse than the first. There were no rough edges around this dream, there were no jagged lines here. It was all vivid, clean cut, sickening.  _

_ George couldn’t move.  _

____

George managed to shake himself out of the nightmare. His breathing heavy and heart thumping onto the sheets. George had seen the corpse again. The corpse of a woman he was all too familiar with, a man he knew, and one he didn’t. HIs mother, father, and a stranger. Earlier, George had sweat through his sheets out of sickness, now, the brunet was almost shaking in fear. Shock radiated through his veins, rattling through his bones. 

George flipped himself over to his back. Still uncovered by blankets or sheets, the brunet wrapped his arms around his stomach, bringing his legs up to curl just slightly. The brunet tried to steady his breathing. His fingers pressed into his own rib cage, trying to force the heavy inhales to stop.

His ribs, they just wouldn’t stop. Fingernails bit into sensitive skin, willing it to stop. Rolling breaths ripped through George’s throat and tore at his diaphragm. The brunet pinched his eyes shut, spots of light and color burst from behind his eyelids from the pressure. 

George tried to suffocate his own exhales, nails grazing over his own skin. Puncturing the delicate flesh over his ribcage. Rasping breaths steadied under the press of hard fingertips. But the scratching didn’t stop, George tore at his stomach, hands digging into any loose skin they could find. Red lines trailed behind pale digits. The boy sobbed, dry, into the dark room. The noise was heard by only one pair of ears, deafened by the plaster that caged the brunet in. 

George was trapped, by drywall and paint, by panic, by his own dreams. Another sob ripped from his throat. Loud, heaving breaths took the place of the erratic and panicked gasps. An improvement, either way. 

The brunet turned to his side, one hand coming away from the soft skin of his stomach to grasp at the pillow beneath his head, an attempt to ground himself. Rather than pale skin, his right hand found a hold in the fabric of the pillow. George turned over further, burying his face into the pillow, smothering his own sobs. The image crawled into his brain cavity, lodging itself deep inside his skull. 

George tried to ignore the icy fingers attempting to pry his eyes open, still bare chested and unprotected by blankets on the bed. 

____

Clay had fallen asleep slowly, deflating like a balloon into the too-soft mattress. Each individual event from the day replayed through his head. He had reconnected with Sapnap after several weeks of radio silence, played with George.  _ God, George. _ The boy wouldn’t seem to stop knocking at the back of his mind. Everything managed to remind him of the British boy. In the limited number of times they’d spoken, Clay had found himself speaking freely, poking fun, being… himself. Something he wasn’t able to do very often, and especially not with near-strangers. 

Then Wilbur, he seemed like a pretty genuine guy. A little more mature than Clay himself (maybe a lot more mature) but someone he could see himself getting along with. What was Clay’s luck with meeting British people recently?  _ Weird. _

Lying on his back, Clay’s hands found a place to rest just on top of his navel. The fingers of his right hand tapped at the wrist of his left. Years of memorization of the letters there, Clay could picture them nearly perfectly on his skin. On his hip as well, almost a copy and paste of the name on his wrist. How lucky was he to get “ _George_ ” and “ _Georgie_ ”? Not too helpful in the whole process of finding a soulmate. 

Online, Clay never tended to share his real name- Sapnap knew it, and Clay thought back to a time where he slipped up and told Bad his real name rather than his screen alias. But who knows if Bad even remembered the interaction. 

Fingertips skimmed the edge of Clay’s soft shorts, the first name that had appeared on his skin had showed up just there. As far as his mother told him, it had been there since birth, that would mean that his soulmate was older than him, but he’d have no way of knowing just how much older. Clay thought of the possibilities, his soulmate could be older by a few years, or… more than that.  _ God, _ what if his soulmate was much, much older than him? This was an issue that hadn’t occurred to him before. Clay prayed that the universe hadn’t partnered him with someone twice his age. The universe knew better right?

It was often that Clay had nights like this, laying in bed, pondering the problems of the world as though he could fix them himself. His birthday was coming in a few days, less than a week and Clay would be a legal adult. As a child, Clay had always pictured the transition into adulthood as a drastic change in his life, but it was likely going to be spent finishing the last of his summer work for school that would start only a few days after his eighteenth birthday. So much for drastic. 

Clay had seen himself moving out once he had the opportunity, living a free man, away from the demands of his father and the expectations of his mother. Both of Clay’s parents had very respectable jobs, but the whole suit and tie gig wasn’t quite his style. Working from home would be nice, as long as Clay managed to keep up on being social and not falling into the pit that he had before. One where he was too afraid to contact any of his friends for fear of being ridiculed over his lack of communication.

After what could have been hours or maybe just ten minutes, Clay’s eyelids drooped.  _ It would be easier to think with his eyes closed…  _ Clay was too far gone to regain his train of thought, lying there on his back, one hand touching the name on his wrist, the other ghosting over the marked hipbone over his shorts, Clay fell asleep. 

Waking up was just as easy as falling asleep, effortless, slow. The sun poked through the window at the foot of Clay’s bed. Clay rolled over, facing away from the window, to block out the light. Much of the time it was nice having a bedroom that faced east, Clay appreciated the way the sun lit it up most of the time- Early mornings when Clay would rather sleep in were not one of the appreciated. 

The quilt on his bed was pulled up to his chin, warmth encompassed the tall blond, shielding him from the prospect of having to wake up so early. Clay was almost uncomfortably warm under the heavy quilt, but far too comfortable to do anything about it. 

Clay dozed for a bit longer, not quite awake yet, but basking in the warmth of the sun. He might have looked something like a cat, content in a patch of sunlight to sleep all day. Clay wouldn’t be opposed. 

All was fine and dandy until he remembered the unofficial promise he had made to complete the work for the rest of the week. It was only a few assignments per class, he was in the home stretch for summer work, so it might be nice to get it all done early and have a bit of time to relax before  _ actual _ school started. Maybe, just maybe, if Clay had all of the work done early, it would be the cherry on top to convince his mother to let him go fully online for his final year of school. See, Clay’s mother had said that she would  _ consider  _ allowing her son to do online if he made up the work he was supposed to, not that she absolutely would. So Clay needed to pull out all of the stops to convince her. 

Green eyes blinked open, sunlight assaulting his sensitive sightline. Clay rubbed at his eyelids, brushing away the last bit of sleep. Downstairs, someone was puttering around the floor. It must have been early enough that one, or both of his parents had yet to leave for work.  _ Damn the sun for waking him up. _

Clay grabbed his phone from the nightstand on his left, it read  _ 7:13 _ , a few Discord alerts and twitter notifications lit up the screen. The blond huffed a short breath, rolling over to plant his feet on the floor.

One trip to the bathroom later, Clay found himself, not surprisingly, in front of his computer monitor. Knuckles cracked, sock feet tapping against the floor, the blond got to work.

He had a plan today. 

____

George wasn’t sure he ever made it back to sleep after the nightmare. The bags under his eyes and the weight in his stomach that kept him in bed seemed to concur. George had rolled around on top of the comforter for what seemed like hours and the sky slowly lightening up behind the curtains only proved the theory. George was doing what could only be defined as wallowing. Nothing was comfortable, he couldn’t lay in one position for more than twenty minutes. The constant rustling and discomfort didn’t allow for much rest in between movement. 

The brunet had forced his eyes to stay shut for now, and it worked for a little, until a buzzing on his nightstand broke him from the brief serenity. George was going to ignore it, figuring it was just from Discord or one of his friends, who else would be up this early? 

All ideas to ignore the buzz ended when they didn’t stop. George groaned, reaching across the sheets blindly to grasp for the cell. After the phone was retrieved, George squinted at the screen, foregoing a look at the caller ID, instead just thumbing the accept button. 

_ “Hello?”  _ George rasped into the phone, sleep and sickness rubbing his throat dry. 

“Hi, dear.” A familiar voice spoke. 

“Mum?” Another rasp into the receiver, “Why are you up so early?”

His mother let out a breathy chuckle, it was short and ended as quickly as it started, “It’s nearly one in the afternoon, dear.” 

“Oh” George responded, mind still not quite present yet. Maybe he had “rested” for longer than he thought. 

There was a moment of silence before his mother spoke again. “I had an early doctor’s appointment this morning, George.” Her voice lost all cheer that it had before, there was no evidence of the smile that she almost always wore. “I told you I was waiting for results about the possibility of cancer.” George froze at those words, sitting up in the bed to lean against the headboard of the bed. Pressing the phone more firmly to his ear. “Well, we found out today…”  Her voice trailed off. 

“Mum?” George asked, voice weak, and not just with illness. 

“It’s stage four, Georgie.” Her voice cracked just a bit, “They’re not sure if they can help it.” It sounded like she was crying, George wasn’t sure what to say. He reached up with his free hand, touching his own cheek, eyebrows furrowing when it came away wet.  _ When had he started crying?  _

“I don’t expect you to come home, I know that you’re busy. But I wanted you to know what the doctors are saying now.” George sniffled a little, it sounded as though his mother did the same. 

The brunet didn’t hesitate, “I’ll pack my things and start looking for a train ticket,” George flung his legs off of the side of the bed, the blooming headache pushed to the back of his mind for the time being. George wiped his cheeks again. Rifling through his closet for a shirt to throw on. 

“Honey, that’s not necessary. We don’t even know what all this really is, there’s no reason to panic.” The words told George to halt his frantic pacing there, but the tone of her voice told him to work as quickly as he could. 

George paused, “I- I feel like I need to come home, Mum,” words fragile and broken near the end, like shattered glass on the floor. There was silence on the other side of the line, just scattered breaths and unspoken words. 

“...Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt your work or-” she stopped herself. 

“I promise it’s okay, work can wait.” She didn’t need to know that George’s inbox was in a drought for work opportunities lately. 

She sighed into the receiver, “Only if you’re sure, Georgie.” There was no sunlight in her voice, no brightness like there usually was. It was dull, afraid, sad.

“I’m sure, Mum. I’ll start packing.” George moved to find a bag that he could shove some clothes into. “Oh- and I’ll let you know when I get a train ticket.”

“Okay, Georgie.” she took a breath, “I love you.”

George stood up from where he had bent over to look under his bed for his luggage, “I love you too, Mum. I’ll call you in a bit, yeah?” 

“Alright, I’ll talk to you later.” 

George turned to sit on the bed, throwing his phone on top of the comforter and running his hands through his tousled hair. First act of business: take some ibuprofen. He didn’t want to think about his mother and what stage four breast cancer could mean, it would only make him feel worse than he already did. Now, all that he needed to deal with was what he needed to pack for an unplanned visit back home. 

George took a deep breath, followed by a slow exhale before getting to work. A shower was another necessity, no matter how bad he felt, something needed to be done about the grease in his hair. 

One scrubbing later, George sported a pair of comfy jeans and a tee shirt, he had shaken as much water from his hair as he could muster, but the tops of his shoulders were being uncomfortable dripped on. Oh, well. 

The brunet was distracted by another buzz from the comforter this time. George dropped what he was doing in case it was his mother calling again. George dropped the suitcase in his hand, taking his place back on the bed to check the notification. 

Huh, Discord. 

_ Dream: Hey, idk what you’re up to, but do you wanna play bedwars or something? I’m bored :P _

George’s breath caught in his throat at the sender,  _ how does one politely respond in a way that leaves no room for follow-up questions?  _ George’s fingers ghosted over the keyboard on his screen, but nothing came to mind. 

This was something he could deal with later, maybe on the train? Either way, now was not the time, as much as he would rather play bedwars and not be faced with an issue like… this. George didn’t even want to think the word. 

The phone was discarded back onto the bed, and George left the room to collect his toothbrush and other bathroom items. He was in a hurry to pack and get moving. 

____

Several hours of taking notes and finishing projects for all of his classes, Clay could officially say that he had completed all of the work he had been assigned for the summer, with six days to spare. On a whim, the blond decided to shoot George a message, asking if he wanted to play with him. Sapnap was likely working, so Clay decided against messaging him for now, George was his next best option. There was Wilbur, but who knows if he even wanted to speak to Clay? 

That was something to think about later. The message sent, and Clay awaited a response from the elder. 

In his wait, he hopped into his own solo battle, something to kill the time for now. Little did Clay know, he would be waiting for a response for more than he had bargained for. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy
> 
> um here's your xmas present i supppose.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise visit home wasn't exactly expected, for anyone actually. George's inactivity has sparked some worry among friends.

_ That was something to think about later. The message sent, and Clay awaited a response from the elder.  _

_ In his wait, he hopped in his own solo battle, something to kill the time for now. Little did Clay know, he would be waiting for a response for more than he had bargained for.  _

____

  
  


George was jostled in his seat, the train rumbling into motion. George had stumbled through his apartment, gathering up clothes and shoving them into two suitcases. They were a moving out gift from his parents that he had never gotten the chance to use since moving out. 

Here he was now, tucked into a window seat with an ETA for an hour and a half from now. George’s shirt may have been backwards, and his shoes not laced properly, but he was on his way home. To the place where he grew up, gosh he hadn’t been back for nearly two years. In the past, his parents had visited George’s apartment for holidays, and on any occasion that they could (work was tough to schedule around) but mostly just Christmas, Easter wasn’t a huge thing for the Davidsons, so it was only spent together on the off-chance that everyone was completely free to travel a few hours away for a weekend. 

George was the homebody-est of homebodies, he really only left his apartment when he had to. And most of his social interaction came from the nice old lady that lived in the apartment across the hall and, every now and then, the cashiers he ran into when he felt the need to leave the house for groceries. 

Groceries… George hadn’t thought about the perishable food in his fridge, although there wasn’t much of it, the brunet visibly grimaced at the thought of returning home to spoiled food. Outside the window, buildings flew by. George shuffled in his seat, he had thrown on a pair of jeans to look not quite so … homely. But George was now regretting the rough material on his legs and hip bones. The scratches left over from his panicked awakening were rubbed every time George shifted in his seat, denim scratching against the red lines hidden below his waistband.

It wasn’t often that George wore jeans, there was no point wearing anything other than sweatpants and lounge clothes when he didn’t leave his apartment, well, other than going to collect mail from the downstairs when necessary. 

It had only taken half an hour for George to pull together two suitcases, and another ten minutes for him to find a train that would take him to London as soon as possible. Truthfully, George’s stomach was still rolling, even more so with the lurching movement of the train. But with one suitcase between his legs on the floor and another above his head on the luggage rack. It had only taken a short Google search to book a ticket, one questionable bus ride to the train station, and the brunet was an hour and a half out from his parents. 

Since he had scheduled the train and shot a message to his mother letting her know when he was scheduled to arrive, George’s phone hadn’t left his pocket other than to confirm his ticket to an older gentleman before boarding. Since departure, the brunet’s eyes had been fixated to the passing world. 

It was strange, you know? Everyone has their own path, for George, his life was falling into shambles before his very eyes. But someone across the world couldn’t care less about what was happening to him. 

George had a distant relative pass from cancer a few years ago, something like his father’s cousin? It was an aunt he had never met, regardless. But his father was nearly unreadable during her diagnosis and treatment… George couldn’t imagine what he looked like now. He was going to see it firsthand soon enough. 

Leaving the more populated areas of Brighton led into more open space, trees grew more frequent as the buildings became few and far between. George had grown up in the city, a compact neighborhood with cookie cutter houses along a busy road, similar to most children in the area. When George had come up with the idea to move, his parents were hesitant, especially with George’s plans to move so far away. But George wanted to be in a less populated city, not to say that Brighton wasn’t big, but compared to London, it was tiny. 

George was happy in his small apartment, he felt independent. Rent was a big plus too, the complex was owned by a nice older lady that was flexible on payments and always willing to send someone if something ever broke. He had picked up a job at the corner store near his house in London, where he worked for the last few years of school, it paid decently, and George was able to save a considerable amount, with the help of some coding work, he had found a cheaper apartment in an area he liked, which brings us to today. 

George wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been home for almost two years, maybe because his parents had always insisted on coming to him, but of course there was nothing stopping him from loading up a bag and getting on the next train like he had literally less than half an hour ago. His train of thought was interrupted by an agitated rumble from his stomach. George grimaced at the sudden lurch from his gut, silently praying to whatever deity might be listening to get rid of his nausea. 

He slumped slightly in the seat, resting his weight against the wall, George ripped his eyes from the too-fast moving scenery, it was most definitely not helping the dizziness that had never fully gone away. A buzzing from his pocket was what finally opened his eyes, just in case it was one of his parents messaging him. 

Dazedly, George let face ID do the work to open to the home screen, even with the bags under his eyes and the fact that he was significantly paler than usual, within a moment, the phone opened to the lock screen. 

A red icon waved in the corner of the Discord app, George thumbed over the notification, opening the app. The most recent was in the group with Dream and Bad, just under it was an opened DM from Dream. George had kind of forgotten about that. With his rush to pack and schedule a train, the brunet had decided to leave dealing with it later… Well, it was later he supposed. 

The message from Bad was nearly the same as the DM from Dream. Except he was asking what Dream and George thought of the game so far and letting them know some of the plans coming soon. 

Well it wasn’t like George could play now, y’know due to the fact that he didn’t exactly pack his whole computer setup. He was staying with his parents indefinitely, so there was no telling just when he was coming home. He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. 

There on that train, George was left with something that felt almost like guilt, it settled just below his lungs and weighed him down to slump in his seat. He had over an hour left on this lonely trip, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond to either of the messages. Instead, George swiped away from Discord, tucking his phone beneath his leg. He wasn’t in the right mindset to keep up with any lighthearted conversation right now. 

On its own accord, George’s left leg bounced to a beat that didn’t exist, mindless fingers danced across the fabric of his jeans, tracing the lines made by thread in the seams. George always tended to be a bit fidgety when having to sit still for extended periods of time, this was no different. Without the phone to keep his hands occupied, the brunet had nothing to do  _ but _ fidget. 

Only an hour longer and George would arrive in London, his father had agreed on grabbing him from the station, George was glad he wouldn’t have to catch another bus. It was quite difficult trying to handle two suitcases on a bus when you’re George’s size. 

____

Clay had half-way forgotten about the message he shot to George, instead, he was now in the KitPVP lobby waiting for a certain BadBoyHalo to join. Bad had asked if he wanted to hop on and play a bit with him, and with nothing else to do, Clay gladly accepted. 

So here he was, currently scrolling through Twitter awaiting a call from Bad. Clay wasn’t sure how good Bad was at PVP, but regardless, he hoped for a little competition at least. Wow, that sounded pretty cocky of him… What could he say? The boy spent several hours a day at this very computer screen, he was bound to be at least decent at the game. 

In the bottom left corner, Clay’s eyes were drawn to the text announcing that Bad had joined the lobby. Clay smiled a bit to himself prepared to answer the call the moment it came through. The blond stretched his arms out to the side, elbows a little stiff from where they had been resting. He reached above his head, pleasant cracking all the way down his spine, he popped the knuckles on each hand before returning them to the keyboard on the desk. Like it was planned, the Discord dial tone rang through the headphones that were only halfway on Clay’s ears. 

“Hey, Bad,” Clay spoke, centering the headset and adjusting the blond locks underneath, first pulling the hair out of the way of the earpieces, and then pushing the overgrown fluff on his forehead out of the way. 

“Hi~” It had been a bit since Clay had spoken to the older man, the familiar nasally voice put a small smile on his face. “Are you ready to get crushed?” the elder teased. 

“Yeah, we’ll see about that…You can pick a kit,” Clay always enjoyed how easy it was to get straight into things with Bad. 

“Hmm~” Bad thought, it appeared he was going through the kit menu. Clay watched as Bad scanned over the options, when the black and red character began to move again, the blond received a duel invitation, accepting it, they were teleported into the arena. It seemed like there had been more work done even in the short time since Clay had been here last. But Bad probably had half a dozen builders working on the maps. 

Clay wasn’t surprised to see the items in his hotbar, a diamond axe in his right hand, a shield in his left. Across the arena, Bad blocked and unblocked his shield. Like a rodeo clown beckoning a bull, Clay shifted in his seat, Bad didn’t know what was coming. 

“You ready, Bad?” Clay teased. 

“Ready to win.” 

“If you say so…” Clay pounced, sprinting towards the other. Once he was within reach, Clay blocked his shield, letting the older get the first hit. While his shield wasn’t blocked, the blond struck, landing critical hits on the other. He retreated, letting Bad advance. 

Bad managed a few good hits before Clay pushed back, disabling his shield and getting him down to only a few hearts. A final few hits and Bad’s character fell to the ground. 

“No~” Bad wailed. “How low were you, Dream?” They were teleported back to the starting lobby. 

“Five hearts, what happened to beating me, Bad?” Clay scanned the kit menu, choosing a sword and bow option. 

“That doesn’t count, it was a warm up,” Bad decided, character crouching in front of Clay’s. “Let’s go again, I’m warmed up now.” Clay chuckled at the older man. 

“If you say so, Bad,” They were teleported again into a new duel arena. “Y’know what? I’ll let you have the first hit.’ Bad didn’t need to know it was part of his strategy to get the opponent to hit first and leave space for a combo. 

Bad moved hesitantly, approaching Clay cautiously. Bad struck, getting a low level hit, the blond moved forward, getting a few rapid hits before backing off. The back and forth continued for a bit, Clay’s health never getting too low. And soon enough, Bad was dead again. 

They played for several rounds, Clay winning all of them under various kits. 

Bad was exasperated, “How in the world are you so good at PVP?” His voice was laced with slight frustration, but still carried Bad’s normal lighthearted lilt. 

“Practice, I guess?” They hadn’t gotten into another game yet, it seemed Bad needed a breather. “Maybe you’re just shit, Bad.” 

“Language!” Bad scolded, maybe it was a bit far to call him shit… but they were friends right? It was all a joke. “Watch it, Dream. I’ll fire you, you muffin.” 

Clay’s eyes widened at the threat, before recognizing it as Bad giving back to Clay’s teasing. “ _ Oh, please no! Please. I’ll be a good muffin!”  _ Clay imitated a pleading voice. 

“I’m joking, I wouldn’t fire you for being better than me at Minecraft… If you go easy on me next round?” They both laughed, and Clay agreed to “go easy”.

It ended with Clay dropping his armor and letting Bad crit him to death. 

Back in the lobby, Bad’s character stilled, “Huh, George never responded to the group chat,” he was either tabbed out of the game or on his phone, similarly, the blond checked for himself. Bad continued, “He’s normally awake at this time.” He stated . 

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s busy?” The younger of the two offered. Bad snorted. “What?” Clay asked, curious as to why he made the noise. 

“Oh, just, George doesn’t do much. He’s home a lot. Something important must have come up if he’s not answering his phone. 

Clay pondered, then shook the thoughts out of his head.  _ Why was it so often that he found himself thinking about George? It must have had something to do with the fact that “George” just so happened to be the name on his wrist.  _ Clay pulled his headset off of his head, pushing his hair back and replacing the headphones. A cold hand ran over his face, rubbing at his jaw and cheekbones. Clay had never been able to grow any facial hair, unlike his father, who had a short beard, Clay had been baby-faced his whole life. Ignoring the thought of facial hair, Clay wondered about George, there wasn't a time where he had heard the other boy's name and hadn't thought about the names on his skin. 

The blond wished he could find some semblance of closure. In school, a career, maybe even something with the whole soulmate shit. If someone could confirm or deny the truth of soulmates and whether Clay even needed to put this much thought into the letters on his skin or if it was a dirty trick made up by the universe to fuck over human-kind. 

These were thoughts that belonged on long nights laid awake in bed, not while Clay was literally in a call with someone, his employer, technically. 

“Have you and George spoken much, Dream? He’s a nice guy.” Based on his voice, Bad was doing something outside the conversation, he tended to multitask, Bad had mentioned once that he wasn’t one to be idle for too long. 

“Uh- A bit I guess, we played on here the other day, he’s pretty fun.” Clay didn’t mention that he had tried to reach George himself earlier this morning. 

“That’s good, I think you two could do some pretty cool projects together, in or outside of the server even.” Bad spoke, his words were genuine. “Have you still been coding?”

“Trying to. I’ve watched a lot of videos and I’m trying some simple things,” Clay thought, there were a few projects that he had started and had given up on when things weren’t quite going his way. “It’s better than I was doing at least.”

“That’s good, Dream! I think you have some potential if you keep learning.” The blond’s lips turned up at the compliment. Bad continued, “Maybe talk to George some, his work is pretty impressive.” Clay nodded, and when he realized the other couldn’t see him, leaned back into the mic. 

“Maybe I will, I really want to do game mods I think, I’m not sure what George is good at, but that’s sort of the end goal.” 

“I’m sure George knows at least something that could help, talking to people who share the same interests has always helped me,” Clay always liked when Bad offered life advice like that, it made him sound like an old man sharing wisdom with his grandchildren. 

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him about it if he goes un-AFK.” They laughed together. But Clay couldn’t help but wonder what George was up to.  _ Is that creepy? _ No, it wasn’t weird to hope your friends were alright, he was just concerned for a pal, that’s all. 

Bad threw them back into another fight. Except this arena was just a platform of slabs several blocks above a pit of water.  _ Interesting… _

“So… this is sumo! George came up with the idea a few days ago and it seemed simple enough so I just did it on my own. The objective is to punch your opponent off.” Bad’s voice was cheery as he explained, then he went in for the first hits. There was no armor, no weapons, just fists and the task to stay on the platform. Clay leapt out of the way of Bad’s punches, jumping to the other side of the space. 

When Bad got closer, Clay lured him to the edge, jumping out of the way quickly before trying to hit him over the edge. 

“No! No, you’re not winning this.” Bad shouted at the possibility of losing, dodging his opponent’s hits.

They were crouching on opposite sides now, waiting for the other to make a move. “C’mon Bad, jump in, the water’s great.” 

“Oh,  _ ha ha _ ,” Bad faked a laugh. “How about you find out,” the older man lunged unexpectedly, rapid hits sending Clay lime green avatar into the water below. 

“What! How?” 

Bad laughed maniacally, “Yes! eat that you muffinhead,” Clay rolled his eyes, he would never get used to Bad’s vendetta against cursing. 

“C’mon, again,” The blond sat straighter in his seat, a threat to his ego was often enough to put him in the competitive mindset. 

Well, his ego was disappointed when Bad managed to knock him off once again. 

“How!” he shouted, “I’m calling hacks.” 

Bad put them into another sumo round, “Don’t be a sore loser, Dream,” Clay could hear the satisfaction in his grin. 

Again, and once more after that, Clay was sent into the water. “What am I not getting? This is so simple.” 

Bad only cackled an evil laugh, “A magician never reveals his secrets, sorry Dream,” the aforementioned groaned. 

“You’re welcome to fire me now, I’m done.” Of course it was all light hearted banter, but Clay didn’t like being beaten, especially so many times in a row. 

“Don’t be silly, you’re not leaving.” 

“What? I have to work for you for the rest of my life?” Clay asked, slumping back into his chair.

“Oh, please,” Bad said, chuckling. “You barely work  _ for _ me, I just supervise.” That was true, but Bad was the one paying him. 

“Whatever, I quit. I don’t work under hackers,” Twin laughs echoed through their headsets. 

“Oh my goodness, I totally lost track of time. I’ve gotta go, Dream, but I’ll talk to you in a bit.” Rapid clicking could be heard coming from Bad’s keyboard. “Oh, and let me know if George messages you? I’m a little worried about him, he hasn’t been active for a lot longer than usual. 

That was true, unbeknownst to the two, George had gone invisible, limiting the distraction and hoping it would make anyone trying to contact him think twice. It may have been a little overboard, but something in the back of George’s mind told him it was the right thing to do. 

“Well, I’ll talk to you later, Bad. I’ll let you know if I hear from George.” 

“Alright, talk to you soon, Dream. Bye!” And with that, the call ended. 

Clay pushed back from the desk, leaving the phone face down on the wood surface. It was past time for him to eat something, he hadn’t eaten a proper breakfast to be fair. 

Down the stairs and into the kitchen, Clay scanned through the fridge for something to eat. But his mind wandered,  _ Was George alright? _

____

George was less than alright, after lugging two suitcases off of the train and out to the parking garage where his father was supposed to be, his arms were threatening to give out. He had managed to doze a bit on the ride here, it had distracted him from the nausea in his stomach, but being awake brought it back full force. He couldn’t deny that his legs had wobbled a bit while exiting the train and navigating through the people to find his dad. 

Relief flooded through George when he saw a familiar head of dark hair. The pain in his shoulders and wrists was forgotten. The brunet visibly saw his father dissolve into a wide grin, as quickly as he could, George rushed toward the older man. He dropped the bags gracelessly near the trunk of the car. Leaning into his dad’s open arms. 

“Hello, to you too, George.” his father chuckled.

George didn’t respond, instead, giggling into his fathers shoulder. “Hi, Dad,” they pulled away, George’s dad held him at arm length, he reached up to ruffle a hand through George’s hair. 

George batted his hand away, it had been a few months since he had seen his father in person. It was rare for him to get off work for long enough to make the hour and a half trip worthwhile. 

“Well, you certainly haven’t gotten taller,” The elder poked. George rolled his eyes, his father always liked to make jokes about his height, or lack thereof. 

George was getting kind of chilly, he hadn’t anticipated it to be so much cooler in the north, he was regretting the thin long sleeve shirt. He popped the trunk of the car, he was glad his dad parked close to the door, not only was it easy to see, but George didn’t have to try to carry his bags any farther. 

With the boot of the car open, George unceremoniously lifted and shoved his suitcases onto the mat in the back. His father watched as George huffed a breath and closed the trunk. 

_ He’s grown up so much. _

George caught his father’s eyes, “What?” He asked.

“You’ve just grown up a lot, I swear you were this small just the other day,” the man held his hands close together, representing the size of a small child. 

George was told this a lot, his father tended to reminisce on his childhood a lot, George figured that being out of the house for so long had left him missing the days where there was a child in the house. 

The younger rubbed his hands up and down his arms, a failed attempt to warm up in some way. 

“Ready to go?” The elder asked. George nodded, beelining for the passenger door. He was mentally preparing himself to see his mother and childhood home, he wasn’t sure which he was more nervous for. George tried to reassure himself that his mom would look nothing like the lifeless corpse that had made several appearances in the past few nights, and even if she didn’t look like her normal self… she was still his mother, nothing would change that. 

The younger brunet relaxed back into the seat, much more comfortable than the ones on the train. The ride home wouldn’t take long, but it would be alright if he just relaxed his eyes for a bit, just to rest. 

George couldn’t see the smile on his dad’s face when he saw the tired boy finally decompress into the seat. He had missed having his son so close, but he knew he most likely wouldn’t want to leave for a bit. The older man sighed, having his son home was a blessing, but he could do without the reason he was here. Back at home, things were worse than George probably expected. All in due time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yooooooooooooooo longer chapter than normal cause this bitch had a creative spark
> 
> also, happy new year, it will officially be 2021 in 2.5 hours for me
> 
> AND!!!!! I made a twitter to interact with readers and fellow writers so if you want some updates on when chapters will be out and some tasteful shitposting, follow @HappynotfoundX on twitter. please follow me I thrive on attention :D 
> 
> I love you all, happy new years, be safe, make good decisions


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George is home, finally. All is well...for now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I have returned, enjoy chapter 21!
> 
> also, with this update, I hit 50k words. That is literal insanity and I don't plan on stopping soon ;)

_ The older man sighed, having his son home was a blessing, but he could do without the reason he was here. Back at home, things were worse than George probably expected. …  _

____

The hum of the engine and smooth roads lulled George into a half-sleep. The radio served as a background commentary to his dozing. The older man tried to make gentle turns and smooth stops, George was jostled lightly in the passenger seat. It was about a half hour ride from the train to the Davidsons’ house in an average suburban neighborhood. Each house was an equal distance from the one next to it. Identical green lawns sprawled across the entire street. Cookie cutter, as some would call it. 

George’s father tapped idly at the steering wheel to the beat of the music. Occasionally glancing over to check on the sleeping form of his son. He looked sort of uncomfortable, and unhealthily pale.  _ Likely to do with his mother.  _ The older man dreaded seeing his family in pain, physical and emotional. With a son that lived so far away and a wife that couldn’t help but do everything she could to support George, big changes were coming. 

The younger brunet blinked awake sleepily to the sound of his father quietly letting him know they were close to home. George pushed himself off of the door, righting the seat belt cutting into his neck. His eyes were drawn to the familiar turn into the neighborhood he had entered many a time. Nostalgia washing over him in waves. George smiled at the sight of a familiar driveway and mildly unkempt lawn. Slightly overgrown grass and messy bushes lined the brick of the house. Over the backyard fence, George could see the tree that had been there since he was a small child. _Nostalgia_. Pulling into the driveway, the car bounced over the bump passing from the street onto the sidewalk pavement. The same pavement George had scraped his knee on and discovered his second soulmate name in the process, he smiled at the memory from so, so, long ago. 

George glanced around, he missed it here. The identical red brick houses and similar roofs that stretched toward the sky. He wondered if his parents had changed his childhood bedroom around. Was there even still a bed in the room? A desk? George had taken the computer he had compiled in his teen years when he moved to Brighton. The small room could be bare for all he knew, and it wasn’t like his parents were expecting this visit. George might be stuck on the couch if there was no bed in the bedroom. 

A worn brown door that had stood in the same place for almost ten years now greeted George and his father. Each with a suitcase in hand. George didn’t let his father know, but he had intentionally grabbed the lighter of the two. To be fair, he had carried them around for quite a while, his dad could manage it into the house at least. 

George was the first to the door, when he moved to grab for the handle, it was pulled away from his hand. The brunet’s eyes shot up, meeting the dark brown eyes of his mother. 

The boy nearly melted at the sight. On their own accord, George’s hands dropped the suitcase. He stepped over the threshold and into his mother’s arms. Her arms wrapped around his thin form, and George held back a gasp that threatened to spill from his lips at the frailness of her. Even just a little over a week had taken a toll on her body. He pulled back to look in her eyes, they shone a bit in the meek sunlight. Like George, she too carried bags under her eyes, pale like himself as well. 

George recalled that, when he was a child, she would tend to lose her appetite if she was ever sick. Great, the woman needed more on her plate, a brief period of not eating would do her no good. 

The eldest of the three watched as his wife and son melted into each other's arms. Both naturally small, but their bones locked together like thin wires. The man reached for the bag that George had discarded on the stone porch, and when they broke away, he began to usher them inside. It would only make his wife feel worse being out in the cold for too long.

“C’mon, we can catch up in the house. It’s too cold out here,” He tapped at the back of George’s legs with one of the suitcases, herding him into the house. 

They found themselves on the two couches in the living room. Everything looked about the same as the last time George had been in the house. Blue curtains draped the windows while tan rugs rubbed against the legs of the sofas. One, a light brown cloth, the other, a dark leather. The house wasn’t particularly coordinated on the inside, but it was exactly the way George remembered it. Off of the living room was a crème colored kitchen, decorated with splashes of green and blue.

George’s father and mother had taken their place on the leather couch, George adjacent to them on the cloth one. There was little coherence among the rooms in the house, it was mostly a collection of furniture and wall decoration from over two decades in the same house. The house was carpeted almost completely throughout, not including the bathrooms and kitchen, but the neutral tones were present all the way through the house. Some with the exception of some decorative wall hangings and throw pillows. 

It almost felt smaller than George remembered, and it wasn’t like he had grown much since moving out, it just wasn’t quite the same as when he left. Like the whole house had collapsed in on itself after George left, getting rid of the unneeded room and accommodating for just the two people. 

“How was the train? We didn’t really talk much on the way here,” George’s father drew him away from inspecting the decor. 

The woman chimed in, “Didn’t talk much? Georgie, did you fall asleep in the car?” His mother teased. 

George’s dark eyes rolled behind his lids, smiling at the poking attitude. He was glad that, despite her looks, she was still as lively as ever. “I was tired~” George whined, I was feeling ill last night...didn’t sleep well.” He glanced down at his lap, reminded once again of the nausea boiling in his stomach. He didn’t want his mother to feel bad about his decision to take the train to their house while he was sick. 

“Ill?” The elder male asked. “Like what?”

“Well- I...was throwing up late last night, I was up a few times” George’s eyes remained glued to his lap, not wanting to see the look on his parents’ faces. His mother would probably look concerned, saddeningly so, one of those looks that just makes you want to hug someone. His father would look questioning, waiting to diagnose whatever George’s symptoms were. He didn’t want them to worry, he would be alright for now. 

George’s mother and father shared a glance, one that George couldn’t decipher. They did that sometimes -spoke in a language that George didn’t know. Maybe it was a soulmate thing, that they knew each other well enough to not need words to communicate. They had met when George’s father was in his early twenties and George’s mother was a newly twenty year old. It hadn’t taken long for them to fall for each other, once the woman finished university, they had decided to get married and start a family. Not far after, George came along. 

“I wish you had told me you weren’t feeling well, George.” His mother pulled away from the intense stare off she and her husband were having. “I would have insisted you stayed home until you felt better.” 

George thought through the possibilities that he might have brought a bug home to his already fragile mother, his face heated slightly in shame. The youngest prayed silently to himself that it was just to do with the episodes of depression he’d been having. He hadn’t shared those with his parents yet either… 

“It’s alright, Mum. I’m here now, that’s what matters,” The concerned look still didn’t leave her face, even with the reassurance. 

“I suppose, are you hungry?” She was right, it was nearly dinner time, almost five o’clock. George didn’t miss the way that they tended to eat much earlier than he was used to now. 

“Actually, no.” George hoped he didn’t upset her with his decline. “My stomach still isn’t quite right, I don’t want to risk it. If that’s alright?” he added on as an afterthought. 

The eldest chimed in this time, “That’s fine, George. Just let us know, yeah?” The brunet nodded in response, his eyes flitted to the television on the wall, a local news channel lit up the screen. The TV was muted and subtitled, a man rattled off local news that George didn’t particularly care about. His father, on the other hand, had watched the news obsessively since George was young. The older man felt the need to be up to date on every topic, and the news station had been the background to much of George’s childhood. Here he was once again, watching his dad engrossed in the screen.

The eldest man’s eyes returned to the TV almost immediately after responding to George, perhaps there was something important going on, George pondered. 

The brunet was made aware of the stiffness in his shoulders, he rolled them backwards, stretching the muscles in his neck and upper arms. George moved from his position, pulling the right one up to rest under the left, and letting the free foot dangle over the floor, just a few inches away from the carpet. 

He swayed in place slightly, the rapid pace of the day falling heavy on his eyelids. Weight pushed to the left as he laid on his left palm, his eyes followed the movement on the screen lazily, while his mother and father spoke in hushed whispers that George couldn’t make out. 

Once again, George was pulled out of consciousness for the second time in a few hours. His body was making up for the exhaustion of illness and sudden travel plans. Not all that comfortable, he drifted off into a quiet sleep. Unaware of the smiles that graced his parents faces at the sight of their drowsy son. 

____

Several hours after ending the call with Bad, Clay had sat about for a bit, first awaiting the possibility of a response from George, and then giving up, and searching for something else to do. Speaking with Bad about coding had lit a small spark of inspiration for the blond. 

Opening Java in one tab, and YouTube in the other. Clay was feeling determined, opening something he had been working on a few days before. Truthfully, he had rage quit the project after it wasn’t going his way, frustrated and burnt-out on trying. But now, Clay was bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for whatever the lines of code wanted to throw at him. 

The video was one that Clay had seen several times over, the general concept was pretty simple, but the execution was much more difficult than the blond had practiced before. He remembered a time where the symbols were literally a foreign language to him. Now, they weren’t all too different, it was like completing a Spanish 1 class and having a brief understanding of how to converse but not much more. But Clay was determined to teach himself. 

It was barely past noon, Clay having eaten a small breakfast but foregoing lunch. He would most likely hold out until one of his parents came home with an inkling for dinner. He was too far into a work mindset to stop and make himself a meal right now. 

Like routine, Clay watched the video, translating the process onto his own code, praying that it was correct.

It continued like so for a while: play video, write line, check every letter for accuracy, repeat. After the mundane but attention grabbing task progressed, Clay found himself left with something that looked akin to a functional code. 

Eyes darted to the corner of the monitor,  _ 1:51 PM,  _ He’d been at this for nearly two hours. Scrolling down the page of code, Clay was impressed with himself, one, for sticking with a single project for this long, and two, for getting as much done as he had in the few hours it had taken. 

Similar to school, Clay wasn’t one to stick with a single thing for extended periods of time, especially if he didn’t have interest in them, so the fact that he had persevered through almost the entirety of this code, despite its simplicity, was pretty groundbreaking. 

Speaking of school, he had meant to message his mother once he had finished all of the assignments. Clay had ground out three months of work in less than two weeks, it was a godsend that he was able to put all of his time into finishing what needed to be done without burning out under the workload. He knew better than to test his mother on the deal they had made, there was no doubt that she would keep him from ending high school online if he hadn’t held up his part of the compromise. 

The code itself was pretty simple, of course it was Minecraft, but Clay wanted to make things much more difficult than they needed to be. With that being said, the blond sought out the most irritating thing he could possibly do to the game, he came up with a hotbar randomizer, every minute or so, (Clay hadn’t thought that far ahead yet) the items in the player’s hotbar would swap places with other items in the player’s inventory. He had decided that it could be both hilarious, and exceptionally infuriating, especially if trying to beat the game quickly. 

His fingers scrolled through the page, for the third time to be exact. In his brain, he knew there were no errors, but something tapped at the back of his skull, and doubt flooded through like a river. 

Clay’s mind could never be content without searching for ways to make the boy question himself, to make a double-take, to erase it to prevent mistakes rather than fix it. It was a vicious bite at his pride that came from within his own head. Quite rude, actually. 

The house was quiet, far too quiet, and it would be hours before either of his parents would be home, and quite frankly, Clay was bored of sitting in front of this PC, he wondered if Sapnap was up to talk, maybe not Minecraft, but just to talk.

In all of his life, Clay had never had a pet, his parents had owned an elderly cat that died shortly after he was born, but that doesn’t really count. Some company would be nice, the house felt too big when the blond was home alone, If- no,  _ when _ , Clay moved out, he was getting a pet. Adopting a friend sounded like a good idea, and physical affection was a plus too. 

In one impulsive movement, Clay had tabbed over to Discord, and called Sapnap with no hesitation, he hoped the younger wasn’t working, or busy, or not in the mood to talk. Clay was feeling… something he couldn’t describe. There was no confidence or elatedness like there was less than a few minutes ago. It was like loneliness, but emptier. The house was quiet, his heartbeat was quiet, the message alerts from George were quiet... He needed something to fill the silence until he got his head on straight. 

____

George blinked out of his sleepiness at the sound of a recliner shutting. To his left, the eldest of the three had lowered the footrest of the chair he had previously been occupying. 

The brunet pushed himself up from his position laying on the couch. He had managed to shift so both legs were curled up on the fabric of the couch, head on the armrest. Under his arm, a small couch pillow was gripped against his chest, a faint trail of drool had made a path down his chin to top it all off. 

His father chuckled slightly at the sight of the boy, looking just as disoriented as he had when he had fallen asleep on the car ride from the train. George huffed, pushing his hair back from his forehead and wiping at his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.  _ Gross. _

By sitting up fully, George could see that all the lights in the kitchen had been turned on, and it sounded like his mother was likely making dinner. With half-lidded eyes, the brunet traversed into the far too bright kitchen to inspect the meal his mother was preparing. 

Two tin-foil covered plates sat near the stovetop, and the woman of the house was preparing to pull something from the oven. 

“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” she spoke, noticing George’s presence. His father seemed to be getting silverware for the three of them. 

The youngest hummed in response, still squinting under the yellow-white light of the kitchen and dining table. 

“I tried to make something sort of bland for you. Try to keep the sick away, yeah?” She bent down to pull a tray from the oven, it seemed to be layered biscuits or something similar. George figured he could keep that down at least. “There’s chicken and roasted veggies as well.”

George’s stomach grumbled a bit, perhaps he had slept off the nausea for a little while? He nodded, a yawn slipping out of his mouth before he could stop it. 

His father chuckled from somewhere behind him, the sight of George stood cluelessly in the middle of the kitchen painted quite the picture as his mother bustled around him, taking care not to bump him with hot plates. 

George turned to ask his mother something, but the words died on his tongue when she giggled at him. He shot her a questioning look, unsure as to what was funny. The woman abandoned the plates and oven mitts on the stove, moving to flatten down a chunk of George’s hair. The position he had fallen asleep in left him with quite the cowlick just above his left ear. She smiled at his failed attempts to flatten the hair himself, and laughed harder when he made a frustrated noise when the hair wouldn’t cooperate. 

He was ushered over to the dinner table by his mother, in her hands, a hot plate that George avoided with his life. He skittered over to the table, hovering over one of the chairs in case one of his parent’s wanted help with their tasks. 

“Sit,” His mother spokes, setting the plate in her hand onto the wood of the table. She really just wanted George out of the crossing paths in the kitchen, and sitting him at the table made more sense than dictating a job for him in his dazed and sleepy state. Everything was finished, all that needed to be done was clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher. It could wait until after dinner. 

George’s father took the seat to his right, the head of the table, while his mother brought the last tray, and took her place across from George. 

They made their plates and ate in near silence, only a few words were shared when asking someone to pass something across the surface. 

George barely tasted the chicken and bread that he made attempt to swallow politely without making a face. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it, no, the food was good, he had missed his mother’s cooking actually. But with every bite, George was tossed back into the waves of nausea. Jostled and thrown about the sea. The brunet swallowed water to try and force down the mash of food he forced himself to eat. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, he realized that his idea wasn’t going to plan when he saw his parent’s nearly clean plates compared to his own, with barely a dent made in it. 

He steeled himself to choke down his pride. Clearing his throat, “It was good, Mom. Thanks for dinner. I just-” 

She cut him off with a gentle hand on his forearm, “It’s alright, I know you’re not feeling well. It’ll keep for tomorrow if you feel like eating it again.” She was always so reassuring, calm, soft, with George. And now, it almost made George tear up hearing the quiet words of affirmation. He nodded slowly, biting his lip to keep it from wobbling the way it wanted to. 

“I think I’m gonna head to bed.” George stood, grabbing his plate and glass from the table, on shaky legs, he got himself to the sink to set the glass down. 

“I’ll clean up your plate dear. It’s alright.” His father had materialized behind him on the other side of the kitchen island. 

George must have looked out of it enough for his father to reach over the counter and gently pluck the plate from his hands. George glanced from his now empty hands to his father. “Goodnight, I love you.” The brunet offered in return to his father’s servitude. 

A smile lit his face in a way George didn’t see all too often. “I love you, too, George.” 

To George’s right, his mother stood, and when her son turned to face her, she opened her arms. Accepting the invitation, he settled into the embrace. Now really trying not to cry. 

“Go to bed, Georgie. I love you,” She whispered into his shoulder, just loud enough for him to hear. 

“I love you, too,” He whispered back, watery smiles were hidden by both in the embrace. George tried to blink away his tears before he pulled back from the hug. 

When he pulled back, his father was there, looking expectantly, “C’mon then, me too,” The trio giggled as George was pulled into another hug, though not quite as sad. 

Goodnights were shared amongst them, and George fell back to walk to the hallway. 

With stumbling steps, George was taken to the hall that led to his bedroom, on the opposite side of the house from his parents. It was the smallest room in the house, but it had been George’s utopia growing up. All he could have ever wanted was in that very room, and now, here he was coming back to it. 

Pushing open the door, he was greeted with the sight of his old room, looking exactly the same as how he had left it moving out so few years ago. He had figured his father would make it an office or storage, but was proven incorrect. 

One of the suitcases had been brought back to the room, by his father most likely. George prayed it was the one he had packed pajamas in so he wouldn’t have to go searching through the other one. Luckily, he was right. There was a jackpot of sweatpants and joggers and comfortable shirts. 

George stripped, forgoing pants in favor of his boxers, and switching out his long sleeve for a soft, worn tee. The covers were cold as George climbed in, but heavy enough that he wouldn’t have to deal with chills in the night. 

He was home, he should feel content, and safe. Especially not sick anymore. He didn’t think he would throw up again, but the ache was  _ still _ present. 

It was almost like a bad omen...or something. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heh so...here I am! Its been a minute but I just couldn't find myself in the right headspace to write this chapter,,,,,, however, it came out to be pretty long! 
> 
> Follow me on twitter!! @HappynotfoundX i shitpost and give some updates for when chapters will be out and where I am on writing:)))))))))
> 
> Love you guys<3


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a minute, but here I am:)

_ He was home, he should feel content, and safe. Especially not sick anymore. He didn’t think he would throw up again, but the ache was still present.  _

_ It was almost like a bad omen...or something.  _

____

Sapnap had answered after a too-long wait of dial tone. It rang through Clay’s ears, it was loud. With the dial on his headset, the blond turned down the sound, dulling the noise to a soft chime. 

He had almost given up and clicked cancel before Sapnap blipped into the call. 

“Hey, Dream,” Casual, normal Sapnap. The voice should have calmed him, but it only made him more antsy in his seat. “What’s up, dude?”

“Are-” Clay swallowed his pride, “Are you busy?”

“Nah, I had the day off work. You good?” God, he wished the younger couldn’t read him so well. He could tell far too easily when something was up, it was like learning another language, when you understand the vocal cues and clipped words without a face to go along with it. 

“I just...wanted someone to talk to, I guess,” He sighed, pulling his headphones off to flatten his hair back and then replacing them to hold back the dark blond locks. 

“Is something wrong, Dream?” the younger questioned. Clay pictured a mangy looking teen with furrowed brows, looking concerned for someone he didn’t even really know. 

Clay sighed, was something wrong? He just felt like something wasn’t correct. Just barely off-kilter. Like a leafed page in a book, something so small that affects the way each page lays. 

“I just feel...weird?” the blond was hesitant with his words, unsure how Sapnap would react, if he would understand.

“Explain it to me, Dream,” Through Sapnap’s microphone, he could hear rustling, and the familiar creak of the younger’s old desk chair that groaned with every movement. 

“Well, earlier I talked to the guy in charge of Munchy, Bad, you know him,” he nodded, although the elder couldn’t see it. “I talked to him earlier, we played that game that I helped test with- With that coder?” He prayed that Sapnap remembered, so he didn’t have to explain further. His brain swerved around George's name o its own accord, dodging the name. 

“Yeah, you mentioned that PVP game,” Sapnap spoke softly, keeping Dream on track of his story while reassuring him that he was following as the other expected. 

“And that was fine, I felt good. But now...it’s like I just dropped off the face of the Earth and I just feel,” He paused, letting out a shaky breath, “numb? I guess? I can’t even describe it, man.”

They were both quiet for a moment, Sapnap’s lips pursed, ready to respond but awaiting continuation from Dream. When the other had let out an audible sigh, Sap took it as a full stop to the end of his rant. 

“Honestly, I’m not sure what to tell you, Dream.” The aforementioned cringed, waiting for the younger to just hang up on him, tell him to sleep it off or something, but it never came. “You’ve been working a lot, and I know you, and the way that you forget to take care of yourself.” 

Clay couldn’t help but argue, albeit a bit meekly, “I showered yesterday, and I’ve eaten and shit, I’m taking care of myself,” It was the most emotion Sapnap had heard since answering the call. 

“I don’t just mean physically taking care of yourself, Dream,” It was almost like being scolded by a teacher, Clay could hear the raised eyebrow and anticipatory look just from the few words. “You work yourself into the ground more often than not, even on things you enjoy.”

There was another shattering moment of silence, Clay’s bottom lip was clamped between his teeth. But it was a grounding pain, he ran a palm up the side of his face, dragging it back down, wiping away the shame he felt knowing Sapnap was right. 

“What else did you do today?” If he was going to get a read on the other’s emotional state, a recall of his day would be a good way to start. 

Releasing his lip, he spoke, “Uh- I finished the last of the work that I need for the summer assignments, it felt good being done with something that big. It also means that I’m gonna be able to do online for my senior year… I should feel happy right now, excited, but I feel nothing,” Frustration was rising behind his words, bubbling and boiling under his lungs. It was better than feeling nothing. Without letting the other get a word in, “After talking to Bad, I wanted to try to code some -and it was going really well, I got a lot more done than I was expecting to, I decided to quit while I was feeling good about it, but then I just kind of...dropped?” There was no other word for it, all the confidence and fulfillment he had been flourishing off of had suddenly disappeared, leaving him to fall back to the Earth from where he was flying on a high of productivity. 

“Maybe you’ve just burnt out, Dream,” Sapnap offered, he couldn’t come up with any other conclusions. “It might just take some time for you to stop feeling weird,” he hesitated on the last word, unsure of how to explain his thoughts. 

A rush of doubt encased the blond. Borderline regret, he had called Sapnap, distracted him from doing who knows what, just so he could talk to him and see if he could diagnose Clay’s problems. He bit down harder on his bottom lip, swallowing the ache in the back of his throat that threatened tears. Clay leaned forward, probably too close to his microphone, resting his elbows on the desk and letting his chin rest in the cup of his palms, fingertips drumming against his temples. The rhythm was distracting, and Clay grew quiet. 

“I’m sorry for calling you…” Words he had said before, to a certain George.

George, who he hadn’t heard from it several days and had seemingly disappeared. George, who he couldn’t seem to get out of his head. George, which happened to be the same name as what was written on his wrist.  _ Fucking George.  _

Clay was worrying over someone he barely knew, it was driving him insane. He’d like to think that George wasn’t the root of his problems, but he couldn’t lie to himself. 

“Dream?”

“Yeah?” A small sniffle followed, Clay hoped Sapnap hadn’t heard it. 

“You’re thinking really loud, dude,” A choked laugh followed, not at all humorous. 

“Sorry, just...thinking.”

“Yeah, I could tell,” Clay could use some Sapnap humor to make him feel better. “What about?”

The blond was startled by the question, his mind scrambling together lies he could tell to get out of the too-serious trap. “What was I thinking about?” he asked, Sapnap hummed. Clay’s nose bunched up, preparing before he spat the words out, they came out mumbled, a garbled sludge of syllables. Sapnap made a questioning noise, so Clay tried again, after a quick pause for a breath, nervously, “Uh- soulmate shit, man,” a breathy laugh trailed the words. 

Clay’s back pressed against the faux-leather of the chair. The heels of both palms pressed into his eye sockets. Sapnap groaned at the reply. “Dude, don’t remind me about that stuff.”   
  


“...What do you think about it?” 

“What do I think?” Sapnap laughed a short and sharp cackle. “Man, I don’t know. My parents are happily married soulmates, but I’ve seen non-soulmate couples just as happy.”   
  


To parallel, Clay recalled his not-so-happily married non-soulmate parents, and he told Sapnap such. 

“I think it’s just circumstantial, I guess,” It sounded like something he had thought on for a while. “Right time, right place kind of deal, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know.”  _ Was he at the right time? Or place even? _

“So what’s really up with you, Dream?” he was distracted at the mention of his name...well, alias. “I think there’s something you’re not telling me.” It was far too often that Clay felt as though he was being scolded like a child by his friends. He’d be eighteen in three days thank you very much. 

“I-” He started, but shut his mouth before he could say anything. Shaking his head, to no one in particular. When he tried again to get the right words to the front of his head, Sapnap chimed in first. 

“Did you find your soulmate, Dream?” Barely hidden excitement, masked behind pure curiosity. 

“Sap-”

That was answer enough for the younger boy, “Oh my God, dude. Who is it? Is she hot?” 

_ She.  _ Fuck. So maybe he had never mentioned that the names on his skin most likely didn’t belong to a girl, it just wasn’t part of their dynamic. 

“Well-” Interrupted once more.

“Do you know her personally or did you use Tinder or some shit?” Wow, he was really invested in this. 

“Sapnap!” He couldn’t take it anymore, he loved the younger to death, he was like the little brother that Clay never had, but it was too far now, too far. 

“What?” 

“Just...shut up, dude.” the elder tried not to let the genuine frustration in his gut slip into his words, but failed trying. 

“I- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked so many questions, I-”

“Dude, it’s fine- just...stop. Please,” It was so loud, in his brain, his headset, all of it was too loud. A harsh blade of silence had sliced them clean through. It left no place for playful banter or smart-ass comments. Clay dug his fingernails into his palms, grounding pricks in his hands. Sapnap waited, on edge from his friend’s sudden blow-up, for Dream to make the first move back into conversation. 

How was it that they had fallen off so quickly?

“Okay…” Clay breathed, “I’m gonna talk, just- just listen, alright?” Satisfied by Sapnap’s lack of response, the blond continued.

“First off, the name I got probably isn’t a girl’s. I don’t have anything more to say on that. Second, I- well, it’s a pretty common name, and, yes, I met someone with the same name, but there’s really no way to tell whether they  _ are  _ my soulmate without flat out fucking asking dude. Which, before you ask, I’m not going to do.” 

Sapnap remained quiet, but Clay was kind of regretting the request now, it was like talking to an empty audience and expecting an answer. He steeled himself to keep talking. 

“I really don’t know why I got so freaked out, man. Like I said, I just kind of lost my good mood all of the sudden, I don’t know why,” Sapnap thought the other sounded a bit lost in thought, frazzled, and spitting out words. “He- the person that has my soulmate’s name hasn’t responded to any of my or my friend’s messages for a lot longer than usual, so I-  _ We _ are a bit worried.” 

“You know I wouldn’t care who your soulmate was, Dream. Even if it’s not a girl. I’m not like that, man.” Clay prepared for a lecture on how he should trust Sapnap more, but it didn’t come, instead, more soft words followed. “I’m glad that you told me though, I don’t want you to feel like you needed to hide that from me.” Clay hadn’t noticed his wet cheeks until he was absentmindedly wiping away the trails of tears running down his face. 

“I needed to hear that.” Clay sniffled, voice wavering over the inflections. 

“You’re one of my closest friends, Dream. Nothing’s gonna change that, especially not your Universe-assigned potential romantic partner.” and for the first time in the call, they shared a genuine chuckle. Just like the children that they were. 

Once they had fully bridged away from the awkwardness, Sapnap spoke again. “So is that why you were freaking so bad? ‘Cause your soulmate’s a dude?” Clay silently prayed that Sapnap wouldn’t make the connection between the “coder dude” not replying to Clay’s messages and the fact that he seemed to just now be panicking over the fact that his soulmate was not a girl. Sap tended to not read into things quite as deeply as he could, the blond wouldn’t put it past him to skim over the relation between the two things. 

____

George recalled that during his childhood, his bed had never been particularly comfortable. Laying in it now, all the memories came rushing back. His hip ached in a familiar way, where the bed dipped down oddly in the center from use, keeping his body in an uncomfortable position for most of the night. 

He had trudged down the hall much, much earlier than he would have had he been in his own apartment, but he could hear quiet voices outside the room, and the brunet wasn’t too keen on staying in the uncomfortable bed any longer. 

When he crossed from the hallway into the living room, he could see his father on the couch, watching the news, as per usual. And his mother in the kitchen. Cooking was something she did in her free time, similar to cleaning, it was calming to her, something she could mindlessly put her attention into. It was familiar, normal.

“Morning, George,” his father mumbled from the couch, eyes remaining glued to the closed captioning on the TV. He wasn’t hard of hearing, no, he just preferred to read the news as it was spoken. 

“I made eggs and sausage, and there’s some biscuits left over from last night as well, dear,” she was bent over the sink, scrubbing at a non-stick pan like her life depended on it. It had lived in their kitchen for probably a decade, so the term non-stick probably didn't apply anymore. 

Like last night, tin-foil covered plates decorated the kitchen island. A plate was pushed into George’s dumb hands, eggs, sausage links, and a reheated roll placed on top of it. Taking a few steps to the table, behind him to deposit the loaded plate, he moved back to the kitchen, buzzing with his mother’s encompassing energy. She seemed more on edge than she had last night… Saving the questions for later, the boy collected a glass and poured cool water from the fridge. 

In the doorway, his father seemed to have materialized. Coming to collect a plate of his own. George’s eyebrows furrowed at the silent conversation the two seemed to be having, his father offering an expecting look, and his mother answering with a stern hand on her cocked hip. 

It wasn’t George’s place to intervene with whatever was going on between the two. But he wasn’t expecting very much light conversation to come from this family breakfast. 

They both took their respective seats at the table, an awkward screech resounded through the room as George pulled his chair closer to the table, his father punctuated the loud noise by clearing his throat a bit more aggressively than necessary. 

They ate in silence, George forcing down limp spoonfuls of scrambled egg, chasing it down with a too-dry biscuit, and finishing it off with sips of water. Pieces of the sausage followed not far after. It was a small meal at least, bland too. Nothing that should upset George’s stomach, although most of the pain he felt at that given moment were coming from his sore back and shoulders from the slab that had served as a mattress. 

George retreated from his plate, part of the biscuit and a few bits of sausage left over. The sausage had an odd texture, George noted. A bit too rubbery for his liking,. The thought pulled him away from the staring contest that was taking place between his parents. The meal had left a strange aftertaste in his mouth, probably the lukewarm biscuit of all things, either way, it was better than the lingering essence of bile that had haunted him for the past few days, gone now. 

He grimaced in thought, he was overdue to brush his teeth, his tongue prodded at the bones in his mouth, unable to leave them alone with the realization of his lack of hygiene. 

As if there had been a casual conversation taking place, George’s mother spoke, “I have another appointment tomorrow.” she declared, “They’re going to do a small procedure, to pull out certain nodes to check for cancer in other parts of the skin, just to make sure it's only what they thought it was.”

“Oh” George said dumbly. 

“It’s non-invasive, they’re just going to pinpoint certain parts with needles and then biopsy what they pull out. The doctor said I should barely feel a thing,” She finished with a smile. 

To George’s left, his father looked disgruntled. Brown eyes flickered from the woman’s gaze to his father’s slightly lowered head. He was physically removing himself from the situation, not engaging in the discussion whatsoever. The youngest shot his mother a questioning look. 

With a sigh, “He’s worried they’ll find something more, and that the surgery won’t be as easy as they think, and- and that we’re getting our hopes up.” She lifted her arms to rest her elbows on the table, fingers folded in the middle. 

“How so?” George asked. 

“If it hasn’t spread to the surrounding nodes, there’s a better chance that the cancer is contained, if it has spread past where they think it has, there’s a smaller chance it can be removed easily.” It was like a recited play, something she had heard over and over...she probably had, whether it be from doctors, or simply telling it to herself. 

So it was another waiting game, who knows how long it would be before testing came back, or what it would take to biopsy what they happened to pull out. He nodded solemnly. But his mother seemed to be done speaking, she grasped her fork once again, albeit a bit tightly, and went back to eating her breakfast. It must have been cold by now, it was less eating and more prodding around the plate, an attempt to retract from the conversation. 

It was going to be a long couple of days. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its been two weeks since I've updated, and that's much longer than I anticipated but I just couldn't find the motivation to do this. I didn't want to publish a half-assed chapter so it took a minute. I had some world-halting news shared to me by a family member that really has put me off my game. I don't want to call it quits on this story as much as I don't have the motivation to keep uploading once a week or less like I was. I hope you can understand that. I really do love this story and I appreciate the attention it has gotten, I'll keep going, just not at the pace I was. 
> 
> Sorry for the long note, but I want to be honest rather than drop off the face of the Earth again. 
> 
> For more updates on the story and reminders for when it's updated, follow my twitter:) @HappynotfoundX
> 
> I love you guys, and I'm sorry for the wait


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hi, sorry for the wait

_ It must have been cold by now, it was less eating and more prodding around the plate, an attempt to retract from the conversation.  _

_ It was going to be a long couple of days.  _

____

Clay and Sapnap had chatted with relative normality for a while after the blond had come the closest he ever had to “coming out”. It was brushed off as just another part of the conversation. But Clay appreciated that Sapnap didn’t make a big deal out of it or ask questions, it wasn't a big deal, it shouldn’t have been treated as one. 

The blond sat, left leg pulled up into the chair, foot on the fake leather of the seat, with an arm draped over the knee. He swiveled back and forth mindlessly as he and Sapnap shared idle conversation. Never offered was a game of bedwars or whatever first person shooter Sapnap was playing now, it was just the two of them talking like friends- the normal. 

He could hear Sapnap fiddling with something through his microphone. Maybe clicking a pen or something similar, but he knew that his friend’s full attention was in the conversation. Hell, Clay himself was busied tying and untying the string on his sweatpants- he hadn’t bothered changing, school work could be done in pajamas well enough and he knew there was no chance in hell he was leaving the house anytime soon. 

After the more serious conversation, not only was a weight lifted off his shoulders, but there was also a small release of something that had been grabbing at the bottom of his stomach, it had let go enough for the blond to catch his breath, for now, at least. 

Of course, he wasn’t off the hook so soon. He had yet to hear from George, he couldn’t help but think of all the things that could have happened. From an internet shortage to… damn, he sure was worried for this stranger, huh? 

It seemed like Bad was worried, and seeing Bad nervous struck a nerve within Clay. The man, usually so put together, being so frazzled was a little irking. Maybe that was why he seemed to feel so down?

Sapnap mentioned his new job at one point, he’d only been there for about two months, but it seemed like something he was enjoying. Not every teenager wanted a warehouse job, but it sort of fit Sapnap. He wasn’t a very sociable guy, so lugging boxes and keeping charts of where things were located and when they needed to be moved seemed like a decent match.

“They kept me solo for a while after they trained me,” Clay could hear the exaggeration on “trained” he assumed that they didn’t do much to prepare him for his actual job. “I preferred being alone, I could just put headphones in and do what I needed to do, but now they moved this chick into my area and she keeps bugging me, man.” Clay giggled at the exasperation. “It’s not funny, Dream. She follows me around and shit, I don’t even know what she’s supposed to be doing, but she’s definitely not doing much, she just spends all day irritating me.”

“Oh, c’mon. Maybe she thinks you’re cute?” Clay himself had only seen glimpses of the younger, in quick Snapchats and accidental camera flashes. The most he could recall was light brown hair and the classic look of Teen Boy. 

“Well, I’m sick of her. She’s all like ‘ _ Hi, Nick’  _ and  _ ‘Wow that box looks heavy, Nick’  _ or  _ ‘Do you know where this goes, Nick?’ _ _”_ The girl impersonation could have used some work, but Clay understood the irritation, his voice turned upwards at the end of each phrase, vocal chords squeaking at the strain. 

“Maybe she likes you,  _ Nick _ ,” Clay teased, using his friend’s first name for what might have been the first time, in a long time at the very least. 

The younger only huffed in return. There was a moment of silence before Clay pressed further. 

“Well… is she cute?” It was meant as a joke, mostly, he wasn’t sure, but Sapnap seemed to be the type to bully the girls he had crushes on. 

The younger scoffed, “Dude, no, it’s not like that!” Understanding what Dream was insinuating. Instantly on the defensive. 

Laughing at the reaction, Clay queried, “Are you sure~?” He sing-songed. 

“I hate you,” the younger grumbled, Clay had caught him, hook, line, and sinker. 

It was a solid change off, Clay spilled one of his most personal secrets, and Sapnap unwillingly subjected himself to several weeks of bullying for bringing up the girl he had a crush on by complaining about her, it was about what he should have expected from a seventeen year old to be fair.

“As long as you don’t hate me like you hate this girl you keep talking about-” 

“I’m going to block you on every form of communication we have, I won’t accept cyberbullying.” His voice was tough as a wet napkin. It was only a minute of empty threats before they both devolved into giggles. 

Clay opened his mouth to take another crack at the younger boy, the familiar sound of the door that led inside from the garage stopped him in his tracks. He was quiet for a moment, waiting to hear footsteps to clue him in onto which of his parents had entered the house. It was far earlier than normal for one of them to be coming home from work, barely 2 in the afternoon. They both tended to come home well past six or so in the evening, so the sound of footsteps was quite out of character. 

“You there?” Sapnap chimed in. It sounded like his mother’s lighter and more precise heels on the hardwood downstairs. 

“Yeah, my bad. I think my mom just came home- got distracted.” She would probably shout up in a few minutes, ask Clay how his day had been, did school get finished, blah blah. The usual post-work check in before radio silence until dinner time came around. 

Sapnap mumbled an acknowledgement, “So, you’re doing online for sure?” the younger asked.

“That’s the plan,” the blond replied. “I haven’t busted my ass for nothing,” a breathy laugh ended the sentence, not all filled with humor. 

“I hope it works for you, man.” Sapnap had turned stoic. “It might get hard not leaving the house, y’know. I don’t want you to get burnt out… I don’t want you to get like this I guess.” 

Clay sighed, he knew Sapnap was right, humans needed a certain amount of socialization to keep steady on the whole mental health thing, and recently, Clay hadn’t done such a great job of that he supposed. 

He saw himself like a Sim. He managed to keep up the basic needs, hunger, sanitation, bladder needs. But the “Fun” and “Social” had run dry lately. There was only so much that online friends could do for you, and of course they helped, but it was like a taste of something you didn’t quite have. Like a shadow of real social interaction that just left you more unfulfilled and desperate. 

“I’ll be careful,” he insisted. 

“You know you can always call me, right?” Sapnap asked, “Especially when you get like this.” His voice was stern, but there was no malice.

“It was just a weird day, Sap, I’ll-” He really wasn’t sure how to keep this feeling away in the future. He settled for a mumbled excuse, “I’ll take better care of myself.” It wasn’t like he could control what was going on around him right now. All he had a hand on was the school work, and that was finished. There was nothing else for him to spend hours of his day doing, another whole week before he would be granted access to the work for this year’s online curriculum, which he had yet to sign up for. 

There was a moment of pondering before the blond spoke again, “I’ll try to call more often,” he offered, “as long as you don’t mind?” 

“Of course I don’t mind,” their voices had rapidly changed from playful to soft and genuine. 

There was an unspoken  _ “I missed you” _ that hovered above them both. There had been a drought of connection between the two, they had blamed it on being busy, but as friends do, they had drifted apart for a short while, only to reconnect, albeit a bit dramatically. Clay wasn’t all that mad about it though. 

As he had expected, a voice resounded from down the stairs with a shout of his name. “One sec, Sap,” He muted his microphone with a click of his mouse. 

“Yeah?” He moved one of the earpieces off of his ear, holding it off his head, with his left hand, he readjusted the hair that had gotten tousled under the earpiece. He replaced it just behind his right ear, listening closely.

“How was your day? Your father won’t be home ‘til way late, we’ll be eating without him,” She had moved close to the stairs it seemed, her crisp voice echoing through the empty stairway and through the bare wooden floored hall. 

Mindlessly, he fiddled with the thin thread bracelet with his right hand, Clay had taken on the habit of spinning it aimlessly around his wrist over and over again. 

“Okay,” He responded. “We can get whatever, I don’t really care,” It wasn’t often that his father stayed at work any longer than he had to- perks of being a high up at the company, something important must have come up. In truth, Clay wasn’t too bothered with his absence, it meant he didn’t have to walk on eggshells during dinner like normal. He might actually participate in a sit-down dinner for once, that was a rarity in itself. Long endeavors with no opportunity to get away from his father tended to result in harsh, bit-off conversation packed with hardly hidden judgemental comments from the man himself. 

“Sounds good, we can talk about it in a few hours.” With that, her short heels click-clacked away from the bottom of the stairs. 

It seemed hard for his father to keep any negative comment to himself if it happened to appear in his mind. It was only a matter of time before a nice family dinner turned into his mother trying to diffuse the situation by ushering them away from the table and to their respective bedrooms. 

Lost in thought, he had forgotten about the younger boy who he had left so suddenly. 

He unmuted his microphone, “Sorry, man. Mom started yelling,” 

“Don’t worry about it,” with a blink, the short, heartfelt moment was gone, frightened away by the interruption of family. Replacing it was the quiet awkwardness and unsureness of how to get back into free conversation. Doubt settled over the blond’s shoulders once more. He rolled them back, shaking off the feelings of discomfort, clearing his throat as quietly as he could. The blond returned to fidgeting with the string around his wrist. 

It was sort of dumb to keep wearing it, in the state it was now, it did less to conceal the six little letters and more to draw attention with the light green tones. Like a highlighter screaming for attention to the name. 

“I can’t believe you’re gonna be an adult soon, Dream,” the younger spoke, it was poignant, like disbelief and… sadness? 

“Four days, I’ll be eighteen,” he replied.

“Damn…” Sapnap whispered, barely audible through the cheap headset microphone. 

“Y’know I’m not going to stop talking to you or anything when I turn eighteen, right?” There was something unreadable lacing the younger’s voice. Clay was confused. 

“Yeah, we’re just,” he coughed slightly, “just getting older, I guess,” he offered, it was almost a question. 

“Been friends four years going strong, Sap, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, you know?” This was slowly turning into a friend’s therapy session, it didn’t bother either of them though. 

“Remember me when you graduate, yeah? I might need your help getting through pre-calc.” Clay pictured their conversations like waves on the ocean. Sometimes they receded, going deep, exposing the darkest parts of themselves. Sometimes they were high, close to the sky, just riding along. Bright, fun. Until they eventually came crashing to shore, leaving them helpless and in need of a life vest- each other, to help pull them back to the surface, Sapnap’s humor and unfortunately timed jokes tended to serve as the life vests a lot of the time. 

He laughed, “I’m not sure if you want my help, Sap, seeing as I barely made it through high school and just now got my shit together.”

“But you took the class at least, you can be my guide,” Clay snorted at the suggestion.

“Sapnap, dude, I’m pretty sure you could pass the classes I’ll be taking this year as a junior, not only am I stupid, you’re stupid smart.” It was probably true, the kid picked up on things quickly, the only reason he wasn’t coding as a full time hobby was because of his job, which he claimed to hate, it was now apparent that he just didn’t like the torture of a pretty girl working alongside him. 

“Whatever, if you passed it, I’ll be fine,” he tried to keep his voice serious, but Clay could tell he was holding back a laugh like his life depended on it. 

“Ouch,” Clay deadpanned.

“I’m kidding, kidding! I promise,” Clay rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. Continuing to twist his fingers into the threads of the bracelet, he chuckled. Sapnap wasn’t wrong, he couldn’t argue.

____

George was left home while his mother and father went to her doctor’s appointment, despite his protests that he wanted to tag along. His mother insisted that he didn’t need to sit in the waiting room for god knows how long, his father took that as reason to park George on the couch and throw a blanket over his lap as a sign to not get up. 

They were probably right, George had no reason to tag along to an appointment that likely wouldn’t yield any new information, but he felt useless sitting around the house like he had been for the last few days. 

So there he was, a scratchy blanket draped over his lap and the remote left within reach, courtesy of his father, the TV still displayed the familiar news anchors, flashes of downtown London accompanied simulated weather models, George let the colors splay over the room, the volume was low, a barely audible hum that served as background for the brunet’s thoughts. 

It had to have been less than ten minutes since his parents had pulled out of the driveway, but it felt like eternities. His mother anticipated that this doctor visit might be a long one, a couple hours at most, so here he was, mid afternoon, tucked into the corner of the couch, the wood frame digging into his knee uncomfortably where it was pulled up to rest on the arm of the sofa.

His phone sat only a foot away, face down on the side table next to the couch, he didn’t want to know if a notification lit up the screen, it didn’t concern him, no one important needed to contact him. He had taken the liberty to send a quick email to the small business he was supposed to be making a site for. It was a short message, explaining that he couldn’t do the job and sending back the deposit. It stung a bit seeing the money leave his PayPal, but he knew that the site wasn’t getting done in the near future, if ever. He didn’t have access to his computer, let alone the motivation to make an entire website. 

The only thing close to a PC in his childhood home was an 8 or so year old laptop that he had insisted his father buy after switching jobs. The new career was more online, and George had expected his father to get some use out of the laptop, if not for work, then for whatever else he could possibly need. Later, it had simply been tucked into a dresser drawer, and for the last few years it sat there, being used once in a blue moon if one of his parents couldn’t manage a website on their phones. It was in decent condition, just far, far, out of date. 

He sat quietly on that couch, the room slowly faded from a blinding white-yellow, into a softer peach, refracted through the window and casting pinpricks of light across the floor and walls. Dotting the news anchor’s faces with freckles of light. 

The phone sat untouched, George could be messaging friends, getting his mind off things, doing anything but sit on a couch being useless. But he didn’t. There were unread messages littering his notifications, people asking if he was alright, how long he’d be gone, if he wanted to play Minecraft. But he couldn’t muster up the initiative to respond to them, he knew he wouldn’t be able to find the words, or excuses. 

He didn’t want it to be real. Real that he left his apartment in a hurry, real that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer, real that he was intentionally ignoring people who cared about him, 

He didn’t want to make it real. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda like this chapter, it's setting me up easy for the next chapter so maybe it'll be out much sooner than this one:DD 
> 
> love you guys!
> 
> Follow me on twitter @HappynotfoundX ,i shitpost and give updates about when chapters might be out


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